It is not, however, with Americans, entirely a'question of the hope that springs eternal inthe human heart, and an optimism that causes them to look for happiness. There is actuality.
The tree may die, but it dies Jgradually and not in a single death agony. There is tragedy in the death, to be sure, but it is tragedy. tempered with time and a. series of pictures of the past, for -how many times has not the tree found its "death" in winter only to revive fin spring? May not this death be Dut the episode of another but longer winter, and another and different spring?
Occasionally, the disaster of Jdeath comes about instantaneously. The tree is struck by lightning!
is split asunder the length of its body, and a gaunt part, perhaps, remains leafless and withered against the sky presenting a spectacle that is ugly. Why? Because it is tragedy portegyed in an ungraceful manner.
It is not tragedy as tragedy that the American deplores. For each tree that is struck by lightning, many hundreds died unnoticed, sinking insignificantly to become again 'a part of earth, perhaps surrounded by saplings sent forth in an earlier springtime, The picture is not unpoetic, and from tragedy of this sort the American does not rebound.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.