Wherever one looked taller and fuller than the
rest, I asked myself,--"Is this it?" But as I drew nearer, they
grew smaller,--or it proved, perhaps, that two standing in a line
had looked like one, and so deceived me. At last, all at once,
when I was not thinking of it,--I declare to you it makes my flesh
creep when I think of it now,--all at once I saw a great, green
cloud swelling in the horizon, so vast, so symmetrical, of such
Olympian majesty and imperial supremacy among the lesser forest-
growths, that my heart stopped short, then jumped at my ribs as a
hunter springs at a five-barred gate, and I felt all through me,
without need of uttering the words,--"This is it!"
You will find this tree described, with many others, in the
excellent Report upon the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts. The
author has given my friend the Professor credit for some of his
measurements, but measured this tree himself, carefully. It is a
grand elm for size of trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular
development,--one of the first, perhaps the first, of the first
class of New England elms.
The largest actual girth I have ever found at five feet from the
ground is in the great elm lying a stone's throw or two north of
the main road (if my points of compass are right) in Springfield.
But this has much the appearance of having been formed by the union
of two trunks growing side by side.
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