Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/364

 till the moss that swings down from them is like banners swung across city streets in holiday decorations. Often the wild grapes, now with tender, crinkle-edged leaves two-thirds grown, swing in stout ropes across the street too, from one oak to another, and all these are also hung with the moss flags till they make the gloom grayer and deeper and in spite of the festive suggestion one half expects in the duskier corners to see the stones, the flash of the sacrificial knife, and hear the eerie chant of the elder priests. It takes the cheerful holly to remove this impression.

Compared with the oaks the holly is a Noah's ark tree, with one central shaft from roots to apex and numerous short, slender limbs that shape the outline into a modified cylinder. At Christmas time this cylinder was of dense, dark green with red berries giving it a ruddy glow in all shadows, as if ingle-nook embers glowed therein. The stiff, prickly-edged leaves stippled the whole into a delightful decoration that has become hallowed by conventional association.

Now the tree is different. The dark green of the Christmas foliage is still there, but from all twig tips have sprung shoots of new leaves that have not yet known their set prickers, but light the dark surface with a wayward sprinkling of tender color which is but the green of the old leaves grown joyous and youthful in the new. Sitting