The Gourd of the Prophet Jonah grew up, and was withered, in a night. But many years ago, before the Norman Conqueror stamped his mailed foot on the neck of prostrate Saxon England, some wandering barbarian, of the continent then unknown to the world, in mere idleness, with hand or foot, covered an acorn with a little earth, and passed on regardless, on his journey to the dim Past. He died and was forgotten; but the acorn lay there still, the mighty force within it acting in the darkness. A tender shoot stole gently up; and fed by the light and air and frequent dews put forth its little leaves, and lived, because the elk or buffalo chanced not to place his foot upon and crush it. The years marched onward, and the shoot became a sapling, and its green leaves went and came with Spring and Autumn. And still the years came and passed away again, and William, the Norman Bastard, parcelled England out among his Barons, and still the sapling grew, and the dews fed its leaves, and the birds builded their nests among its small limbs for many generations. And still the years came and went, and the Indian hunter slept in the shade of the sapling, and Richard Lion-Heart fought at Acre and Ascalon, and John's bold Barons wrested from him the Great Charter; and lo! the sapling had become a tree; and still it grew, and thrust its great arms wider abroad, and lifted its head still higher toward the Heavens; strong-rooted, and defiant of the storms that roared and eddied through its branches; and when Columbus ploughed with his keels the unknown Western Atlantic, and Cortez and Pizarro bathed the cross in blood; and the Puritan, the Huguenot, the Cavalier, and the follower of Penn sought a refuge and a resting-place beyond the ocean, the Great Oak still stood, firm-rooted, vigorous, stately, haughtily domineering over all the forest, heedless of all the centuries that had hurried past since the wild Indian planted the little acorn in the forest;--a stout and hale old tree, with wide circumference shading many a rood of ground; and fit to furnish timbers for a ship, to carry the thunders of the Great Republic's guns around the world. And yet, if one had sat and watched it every instant, from the moment when the feeble shoot first pushed its way to the light until the eagles built among its branches, he would never have seen the tree or sapling _grow_.