As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to look at that
oak, as if expecting something from it.
They were upraised in the days "when men knew how to build." The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly set with time, and their
oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go down them quietly.
Thereat the Sweetness of the Strength of the
Oak smiled upon me and said,--
And though he thought at once how senseless was his prayer that they should not have been killed by the
oak which had fallen now, he repeated it, knowing that he could do nothing better than utter this senseless prayer.
As he advanced in life, the young man adopted pine and
oak as eligible materials for the display of his skill, which now began to bring him a return of solid silver as well as the empty praise that had been an apt reward enough for his productions of evanescent snow.
This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and
oaks that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is far authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson as she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine.
Then I came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees-- live, or evergreen,
oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called--which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch.
Then he unbuckled his scabbard, laid it and the sword aside, and walked deliberately over to the
oak thicket.
"Still following the tracks of the prints, Larsan and I passed out of the
oak grove and reached the border of the lake.
The wagon had passed by, rustling down the road, which was carpeted with fallen leaves of maple,
oak, and alder.
There was no time, just then, to inquire what the Speaking
Oak had said.
He now found himself in a nook of several acres, where the
oak and manzanita and madrono gave way to clusters of stately redwoods.