Given a certain preparedness even the rocks become instinct with suggestion. They are more than stone,--even historical reminders, which incite one to long and pleasing trains of thought. In the mountains I came upon a flat ledge of shale which showed ripple marks of an earlier sea than any we know, a far-off Devonian ocean which once washed this primitive beach. They had long parted company, and now the beach was up among the spruce and balsams,--such vicissitudes are there in the fortunes of all. The ancient waters had left their mark, that however high the rock might go, it should none the less speak of the mother sea. Again, the traces of glaciation on ledges and boulders appeal to the imagination with a peculiar eloquence. What a mighty cosmic plane was that which smoothed these granite ledges! It planed off New England as if it were a knot on a plank, and scattered over it the dust and chips of the workshop. These ledges serve as a fairly accurate compass, and are at least more reliable than the lichens on the trees. Some men have an eye for trees and an inborn sympathy with these rooted giants, as if the same sap ran in their own veins. To them trees have a personality quite as animals have, and, to be sure, there are "characters" among trees. I knew a solitary yellow pine which towered in the landscape, the last of its race. Its vast columnar trunk seemed to loom and expand as one approached. Always there was distant music in the boughs above, a noble strain descending from the clouds. Its song was more majestic than that of any other tree, and fell upon the listening ear with the far-off cadence of the surf, but sweeter and more lyrical, as if it might proceed from some celestial harp. Though there was not a breeze stirring below, this vast tree hummed its mighty song. Apparently its branches had penetrated to another world than this, some sphere of unceasing melody. There is a difference in the voices of trees. Some with difficulty utter any note, or answer to the storm alone; others only sigh and shiver. There are days when they gently murmur together, as if a rumor of general interest had reached them. Again the woods are silent, until one enters a grove of white pines, when on the instant a sweet low chant falls on the ear. Come upon the aspen on quiet days and it is all of a tremor, in a little ecstasy by itself, while the rest are mute. Trees change their songs with the season. In winter the whistling, rattling, roaring of hickories and oaks is a veritable witch-song, beside which the voices of midsummer days are as the cooing of doves. During a quiet snowfall, the white crystals sifting through the pines convey the idea of a gentle sociability somewhere in the branches overhead, the softly whispered and amiable gossip of pine-needles and snowflakes, old cronies who have not met in the past eight months.