Chapter IX The Transplanted Pine
Tradition, that greatest of all historians, had it, that the first settlers on the lands of The Home Stretch had been a young pioneer and his bride from Virginia; and that she, leaving her old home for a new one in the wilderness, yielded to the pretty sentiment of her girl’s heart, and brought away with her a young pine from under her own roof tree. Nursed and watered through all the long journey, over mountains, wilderness and river, she planted it among the great oaks and poplars of her western home. Tradition told how, when the young husband had built his double log-cabin from the solid trunks of the black walnut and thatched it with the rich red hearts of the cedar shingles, the little bride cherished the pine. The story was full of pathos; she and her baby had died that first year, and both were buried in the same grave under the little pine. It was a great pine now, but lonely. It had been a great pine since I could remember. It had always appealed to me, standing alone amid the other trees. For miles I could see it, towering above all the others. And always a little tremor of loneliness came, as one who passes a deserted schoolhouse door where once children have played. The great trees around it, oaks, elms, poplars, maples, seemed at home. This was their soil, these were their friends and kindred. But the pine was not of them. It had been transplanted. Were trees men, the pine would be a Highlander of the clan McGregor. And away from its clan, in a valley where it belonged not, in soil that made for fatness and richness but not for religion and art, it was lonely. For trees are but men who are dumb.
Often, as a boy, staying with Dr. Gottlieb in his cabin, I would awake at night and hear the pine sighing. Once I remember there had been a fierce storm, and as it swept through the forest it maddened the other trees until they roared in their wrath. But the lonely pine tree had called above the roar of the others. One would not look in the Swiss mountains for the cherries of the valley, nor for the cedars of Lebanon in the rich loam of the rivers. This pine was the Scotch McGregor in an English court. It was Bonaparte on Elba. It was Thomas Carlyle in Gaiety street. It was a tree without a country....
Dr. Gottlieb lived among the trees in a double log-cabin, and had lived there since I could remember. My Aunt Lucretia’s heart was as big as her farm, and for many years she and Dr. Gottlieb had been friends. He, being a scholar and a botanist, a very babe in a strange land in spite of all his learning, had been easily parted from what little he had brought to America, and had actually come to sickness and want. Then it was that my Aunt Lucretia took him in and gave him this cabin on her farm. Since then he had grown famous, and was known over two continents as one of the greatest living botanists. In fall and winter he was dean of that department in a noted college, but in spring and summer nothing could keep him from his walnut log-cabin by the great pine in the little valley, where his wild flowers grew in the hills behind him and the trees were his friends and comrades.
His story was like that of many who claim America as home. In the discontent of the Bavarians in their struggle for a more liberal government, many republican ideas were advanced. Gottlieb, then a student in Munich, with a number of other young men, attempted to celebrate Washington’s birthday in the Bavarian capital with speeches so revolutionary that they brought on a riot. In the fighting his roommate and best friend killed a police officer. Gottlieb’s family was influential and stood high in royal favor. But the boy who had done the killing was not so fortunate. To be found out meant certain death for him. So Gottlieb pleaded guilty for his friend’s sake, and would have been executed, but for the influence of his family. Even they could not save him from banishment, and so he had lived with us, as great a patriot as I ever knew, loving his country so that the thought of it would bring tears to his eyes, loving his Fatherland, and yet himself a man without a country.
Now I stood looking down on the double log-cabin that was his home. All around it was peace and calmness. Here had I learned under Dr. Gottlieb to love the flowers, and the trees, and his books.
What a picture his home made! A great wooded blue grass hill rose gradually, slope on slope, above it, and on a little plateau sat the solid log-cabin. At the foot of the slope and running like a horseshoe around it, was a bubbling stream, coming from the hills to the north, circling around and running into the valley below. Over this, a rustic foot-bridge led to the house. The meadows lay in front of it all. I stood back and wondered how that young pioneer had known so accurately and artistically where to place this cabin? Had it been placed ten yards either way, to right or left, it would have ruined the center of the background of trees beyond, and fifty feet further in front would have placed it too far down the dead level of the center.
In stately distances around stood maples, beeches and poplars, some towering high above the cabin. Lengthwise to the rustic bridge it stood, a beautiful, solid home of walnut, and the red heart of the cedar, its dark, rich logs chinked with the white cement of the lime hills. Clear across the front ran the big porch, solid floored; both ends flanked with purple stars of clematis, hanging overhead, and drooping low over the entrance its great masses of bloom.
The orchard, of apple, peach, plum, and cherry trees, lay off to the right. The old-fashioned flowers were all to the right and the pine tree towered over them all.
I raised the latch and entered. Dr. Gottlieb stood before me, framed by shelves of dried flowers and herbs, a small man with a large head, kind blue eyes. The broad brow wrinkled into its smile as he saw me. I pointed to the stone-crop running across the hill. “Oh, Dr. Gottlieb,” I cried, “what is it that in one night makes the bare spots so beautiful?”
He quit his books and came forward, taking both of my hands in his. “Jack, Jack, my boy, you have come back to us again—and from the Fatherland—the Fatherland!... Let me hold your hand—it has touched the soil of the Fatherland—let me look into your eyes, they have seen the Rhine!” There were tears in his blue eyes.
“Do you remember how it changes every spring, Dr. Gottlieb?” I asked, pointing to the distant crowned hills, the rainbow of stone-crop beneath, and the level stretches of pasture land.
He smiled as he looked across at the crimson covering of the bare hillside. “Ay; but I’ve not been idle, Jack, since you left. You remember what I had done before you went away—fifteen hundred species all catalogued in my book.” He turned and pointed to the glass shelves around. “Now I have added four hundred more.”
We talked long over our pipes. He had saved some rare old German ale in cobwebbed bottles, and these we broke in honor of my return. I had to go over my entire life in Germany, and all the four years’ work there. As I dwelt on this, as I told of the old places and scenes, he sat with his head down, and I suspected tears.
I cannot remember when Dr. Gottlieb was not in love with my Aunt Lucretia, though he had never spoken to her on the subject. He spoke only to me, and that always in the same way. So I knew what was coming. I had heard it before, and when I arose to go I could not help but smile as he said, “Ah, Jack, but your Aunt Lucretia! That most beautiful and charming of women! Did you know that each of us has our prototype in a plant or flower; did you know that she resembles the great red wood lily—lilium Philadelphicum? Ah, Jack, it has always been my favorite.”