Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/105

 84

I

the " block house," the judge encountered an oak tree of remarkable features. It excited in terest and commanded admiration. Members of the bar were wont to share his honor's athletic perambulations. It was the October term of Lincoln bar, Л. D. 1873, an(i Wales Hubbard and Hiram Bliss, Esqs., were with the judge at the oak finding of the court. It was a beautiful October afternoon, the party came upon the tree. There was no court reporter there. The sight of the tree arrested the party, striking them with awe and the judge with inspiration. In its proportions, the tree seemed majestic : not so exceptionally tall as it was massive and heavy. Its wide-spreading branches were large and ponderous. The character of its fruit was matter of admir ation, and won marked attention of all as it lay spread on the ground. Its acorns were then and are now the largest ever seen in Maine. Every nut picked in season, is thoroughly sound and handsome in shape : shells smooth as if varnished, and almost uniformly exact in size with each other. There was then no evidence the place where the tree stood had been frequented. It appeared a stranger to humanity. Its site is one of the most picturesque spots on the river or bay. This judicial tramp had been one of discovery. The discovery called for a name. What should the tree be called? The discussion suggested a variety of names. The judge was in doubt. He thought the most ap propriate name would be "Neal Dow Oak," be cause it drank nothing but water and takes any quantity of that! Finally the problem was solved in a call for " Penobscot "; and Penobscot Oak has ever since attached. It has been the charm of the venerable chief justice's October term, for years; and this term he has been wont to call " Acorn Term." In the plenitude of his inspiration, the judge has profoundly and instructively soliloquized, ravished with visions of psychological novelties, in possible virtues of vegetable life in his favorite oak, he asks, " Has it sensation, or the function of thought?" His answer, " Certainly! anything that is alive, has sensation to a degree. This monarch looks as if it might know something! It can

adapt itself to storms and wind.

It is said the

difference between man and the grades of animal life below, is, that while animals may be con scious they do not know they are conscious, but man is conscious that he is conscious. "So vegetation in the form of a huge oak, may have consciousness. Who knows? "This great tree has likewise in form and shape its twists and turns, its straightness and crooks, its upward slopes and downward declensions, its vigor and weakness, its beauties and deformities, like to many a human being, illustrative of char acter, mentally and bodily. Most any character, from the judge on the bench himself, to the court crier, or janitor of court room where the judge sits, may be found in the multifarious limbs of this great oak tree! And there, innumberable, are both beauties and deformities yet to be discovered in the manifold branches thereof, illustrative of human character through the imag ination of the philosophic humorist and investi gator." Such lessons are the judicial suggestion of the find of a Penobscot oak on the Sheepscot, in a niche of the history of Lincoln bar. CONCLUSION. But the oak has a history as a memorial. In vegetation it is the forest king. In industrial hands, it is the strongest rib of the builder's art. In the annals of humanity, it has been the hiding place of precious memories : a beacon light to retrospection : a charm to sacred association, a symbol to inspiration of immortality! This forest king to the Roman was " Quercus," and to the Greek " Druis." Near two thousand years before Christ, and more than thirty-six hundred years ago, an oak stood a memorial fac tor to the family of Jacob, the Hebrew, a monu ment of fraternal goodwill, in a family jar; and was made a memorial of the purgation of his household of heathenism. The strange gods of his family — " their ear rings " and trappings of idolatry, offensive to the conscience of the old patriarch — " he hid under an oak of Shechem." This endowed it with a religious character, and so made the oak a hid ing place from sin in aid of reformation. The dead nurse of Jacob's mother was buried under an oak to mark the spot as a " place of weep ing, " and so made it a memorial of departed worth and keepsake of affectionate regard.