_Milverton_. Besides, one can manage to agree so well, intellectually, with a book; and intellectual differences are the source of half the quarrels in the world. _Ellesmere_. Judicious shelving! _Milverton_. Judicious skipping will nearly do. Now when one’s friend, or oneself, is crotchety, dogmatic, or disputatious, one cannot turn over to another day. _Ellesmere_. Don’t go, Dunsford. Here is a passage in the essay I meant to have said something about—“why should we expect the inner life to be one course of unbroken self-improvement,” etc.—You recollect? Well, it puts me in mind of a conversation between a complacent poplar and a grim old oak, which I overheard the other day. The poplar said that it grew up quite straight, heavenwards, that all its branches pointed the same way, and always had done so. Turning to the oak, which it had been talking at before for some time, the poplar went on to remark, that it did not wish to say anything unfriendly to a brother of the forest, but those warped and twisted branches seemed to show strange struggles. The tall thing concluded its oration by saying, that it grew up very fast, and that when it had done growing, it did not suffer itself to be made into huge floating engines of destruction. But different trees had different tastes. There was then a sound from the old oak, like an “ah” or a “whew,” or, perhaps, it was only the wind amongst its resisting branches; and the gaunt creature said that it had had ugly winds from without and cross-grained impulses from within; that it knew it had thrown out awkwardly a branch here and a branch there, which would never come quite right again it feared; that men worked it up, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil—but that at any rate it had not lived for nothing. The poplar began again immediately, for this kind of tree can talk for ever, but I patted the old oak approvingly and went on. _Milverton_. Well, your trees divide their discourse somewhat Ellesmerically: they do not talk with the simplicity La Fontaine’s would; but there is a good deal in them. They are not altogether sappy. _Ellesmere_. I really thought of this fable of mine the other day, as I was passing the poplar at the end of the valley, and I determined to give it you on the first occasion. _Dunsford_. I hope, Ellesmere, you do not intend to put sarcastic notions into the sap of our trees hereabouts. There’s enough of sarcasm in you to season a whole forest. _Ellesmere_. Dunsford is afraid of what the trees may say to the country gentlemen, and whether they will be able to answer them. I will be careful not to make the trees too clever. _Milverton_. Let us go and try if we can hear any more forest talk. The winds, shaped into voices by the leaves, say many things to us at all times. CHAPTER IV. IN the course of our walk Milverton promised to read the following essay on Recreation the next day. I have no note of anything that was said before the reading.