"Yes--in the time of it. There's beauty in the leafless trees that you cannot see in summer. Just look, Ellen--no, I cannot find you a nice specimen here, they grow too thick; but where they have room the way the branches spread and ramify, or branch out again, is most beautiful. There's first the trunk--then the large branches--then those divide into smaller ones; and those part and part again into smaller and smaller twigs, till you are canopied as it were with a network of fine stems. And when the snow falls gently on them--Oh, Ellen, winter has its own beauties. I love it all; the cold, and the wind, and the snow, and the bare forests, and our little river of ice. What pleasant sleigh-rides to church I have had upon that river. And then the evergreens--look at them; you don't know in summer how much they are worth; wait till you see the hemlock branches bending with a weight of snow, and then if you don't say the winter is beautiful, I'll give you up as a young lady of bad taste." "I dare say I shall," said Ellen; "I am sure I shall like what you like. But, Miss Alice, what makes the leaves fall when the cold weather comes?" "A very pretty question, Ellen, and one that can't be answered in a breath." "I asked Aunt Fortune the other day," said Ellen, laughing very heartily--"and she told me to hush up and not be a fool; and I told her I really wanted to know, and she said she wouldn't make herself a simpleton if she was in my place; so I thought I might as well be quiet." "By the time the cold weather comes, Ellen, the leaves have done their work and are no more needed. Do you know what work they have to do?--do you know what is the use of leaves?" "Why, for prettiness, I suppose," said Ellen, "and to give shade--I don't know anything else." "Shade is one of their uses, no doubt, and prettiness too; He who made the trees made them 'pleasant to the eyes' as well as 'good for food.' So we have an infinite variety of leaves; one shape would have done the work just as well for every kind of tree, but then we should have lost a great deal of pleasure. But, Ellen, the tree could not live without leaves. In the spring the thin sap which the roots suck up from the ground is drawn into the leaves; there by the help of the sun and air it is thickened and prepared in a way you cannot understand, and goes back to supply the wood with the various matters necessary for its growth and hardness. After this has gone on some time the little vessels of the leaves become clogged and stopped up with earthy and other matter; they cease to do their work any longer; the hot sun dries them up more and more, and by the time the frost comes they are as good as dead. That finishes them, and they drop off from the branch that needs them no more. Do you understand all this?" "Yes, ma'am, very well," said Ellen; "and it's exactly what I wanted to know, and very curious. So the trees couldn't live without leaves?"