The fall of a huge tree is a touching sight. See! the trunk trembles upon the last few fibres that stand in the gap which the axman has made. A shiver runs through the foliage to the summit and circumference of the branches. The tree-top bows with slightest trace of a lurch to one side. Then it sinks--slowly, faster, fast! With no undignified rush, but with a stately sweep it descends to the earth. Crash! The ground trembles at the fall. The nethermost branches in their breakage explode sharply like a farewell volley of soldiers over a comrade's grave. Boughs, twigs and leaves vibrate, as with a passionate earnestness of grief, for a few moments, and then are still. There, prone upon the forest mould the glorious monarch lies, majestic even in its fallen estate. A few bunches of human muscle, a keen steel edge and a scant fraction of time have destroyed two centuries of Nature's cunning work. Well, one is inclined to so vary the version of a certain Scripture Text that it shall read "a man was infamous" rather than "a man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees."[A] Of course Mr. Gladstone, and the multitude of undistinguished axmen who delight to fall a tree, have an honorable and lawful vocation. Trees ripen, like other animate things, and when they are full ripe they may be felled; when their time has come they ought to fall; when the exigencies of higher intelligences truly require, they also must fall before their time. But, this brings no justification of that murderous idiocy which sets so many citizen sovereigns of America to slaughtering the grand sovereigns of the plant world. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--The Forest Monarch's Fall. The Brownie's Grief and Anger Thereat.] However, all this perhaps has little to do with our great Elm, except, that one must be grateful that it has been spared to cause the eyes to rejoice in its beauty and to refresh us with its shade. We built a rustic seat, against its trunk, and there in the warm summer days and evenings which succeeded the winter of our coming to the Old Farm, I was wont to sit and meditate, and sometimes doze. It was a favorite spot with me, but others of the family often shared it with me, or enjoyed it by themselves. This will well enough introduce a matter which I have now to lay before the reader. It came to me from the Schoolmistress, who, I venture to hope, is not forgotten by the readers of "The Tenants of An Old Farm." My dear Mr. Mayfield: The package that I herewith send you has a strange history which I beg to recite ere you break the wrappings and examine the contents of the parcel. It happened during one of the warm days of last June that I sat on the rustic bench under the Great Elm and read Mr. Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal." I closed the book and thought, with an exquisite sense of its beauty and fitness, upon the poet's opening verses which contain a description of June, and in which are these lines: