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Only do not rob or mar the tree, unless you really need what it has
to give you. Let it stand and grow in virgin majesty, ungirdled
and unscarred, while the trunk becomes a firm pillar of the forest
temple, and the branches spread abroad a refuge of bright green
leaves for the birds of the air. Nature never made a more
excellent piece of handiwork. "And if," said my lady Greygown, "I
should ever become a dryad, I would choose to be transformed into a
white-birch. And then, when the days of my life were numbered, and
the sap had ceased to flow, and the last leaf had fallen, and the
dry bark hung around me in ragged curls and streamers, some
wandering hunter would come in the wintry night and touch a lighted
coal to my body, and my spirit would flash up in a fiery chariot
into the sky."
The chief occupation of our idle days on the Grande Decharge was
fishing. Above the camp spread a noble pool, more than two miles
in circumference, and diversified with smooth bays and whirling
eddies, sand beaches and rocky islands. The river poured into it
at the head, foaming and raging down a long chute, and swept out of
it just in front of our camp in a merry, musical rapid. It was
full of fish of various kinds--long-nosed pickerel, wall-eyed pike,
and stupid chub. But the prince of the pool was the fighting
ouananiche, the little salmon of St. John.
Here let me chant thy praise, thou noblest and most high-minded
fish, the cleanest feeder, the merriest liver, the loftiest leaper,
and the bravest warrior of all creatures that swim! Thy cousin,
the trout, in his purple and gold with crimson spots, wears a more
splendid armour than thy russet and silver mottled with black, but
thine is the kinglier nature. His courage and skill compared with
thine
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