THE VOICE OF THE SPRUCE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3619, 24 July 1923, Page 59

THE VOICE OF THE SPRUCE.

The strange power of the trees to fill the soul with thoughts cf mystery and beauty is strongly attested from the very earliest origins of poetry and religion. Who even to-day has not at times felt poetic inspiration when wandering through a shaded forest of spruces and pines—those trees that stand so proud of their height and straight beauty, reaching far up into the blue of the sky, or waving their lacy tops at the little new moon? But with most mortals poetic .thoughts die aborning—not so with Clay Perry in “American Forestry ' (Washington). He links his poetic thoughts to words, and so through him we hear the voice of the Slim Spruce, and, listening, this is what we hear: I am Slim Spruce, lineal descendant of the Great King Spruce. Long ago my father told me I was born for a noble destiny. Born and reared amidst the majestic company of my royal kin, my proud crest waves high above my neighbours, Jack Hemlock, Tom Tamarack, Billy Balsam, Pete Poplar, and even burly Prince Pine. It has done so for half a century. At my feet flows the Roaring River, monarch of streams, dashing down from the royal monarch of mountains, old 'Sprucetop, kingdom and throne of my royal line. For centuries the Spruce family has reigned in the Kingdom of Forest, undisturbed, ever rearing proud crests above lesser brethren, aspiring high to a Place in the Sun—and reaching it-—growing straight, slim, and tall, but never at the expense eff strength. Our fibrous bodies are firm and well-knit, supple and tough; nor at the expense of beauty and grace. Our rounded branches are adorned with a fine fringe of royal green. With tenacious feet digging deep into rich forest mold, product of weaker families that have yielded to the fierce attack of Storm or insidious decay of t Time, roots reaching cunningly down to the subsoil and to drink of the sweet, life-giving elixir, water, to flood our veins with sap of life, we have grown high, with graceful tapering trunks, fine-arched limbs, nodding plumes and tassels. Comes Man, the labourer, the thinker, the giant ant of industry. He takes awav Prince Pine and his brothers, and his body is sawed and split and smoothed to make planks and boards for building bridges, mills—ignoble use, indeed, for a noble family; but we, scions of xving Spruce, know that such fate is not for us. Something finer, nobler, is our destiny. Jack Hemlock next is taken by Man to make huge timbers to build a dam that checks the royal rage of Roaring River and directs him through sluices and into dark tunnels, where he is forced to labour, turning wheels and spinning snarling Saws. Ah, the Saws! We of the Spruce Line feel the sullen recoil of Roaring River, as he strives to withdraw from these slavish uses. His back rises like that of an angry mountain lion—higher, higher. We feel it on our feet, rising ; but now he yields and sinks low, submissive, giving his heart's blood for the work of the world of Man. He has found his destiny. Then all is done ; the mills are builded. Man brings his hordes into the very heart cf the domain of King Spruce. He builds cabins, shacks, stables; fetches horses, belching engines, many tools of steel. We shudder in all our limbs, but. stoical, stand firm, apparently indifferent to this threat. Then' one day, when Snow buries deep the forest floor, men come and attack our unbroken, serried ranks, and we fall—by the dozens, the hundreds, we fall, crashing with majestic thunder, to the ground, bearing with us in our fall lesser trees, and now and then we pin beneath our great bodies the puny men who attack us. Steel bites our firm boles and hacks holes and our hold weakens. We fail. More weapons of steel decapitate us, hew off our limbs, denude us of all save our clothinnr of bark. But our bodies hold together, fibrous, tough, despite mutilation, for we know that a noble- destiny is ours I, Slim Spruce, lie a.mid my brethren in greal piles men call Logs. Our sap is congealed, frozen. Then comes the Sprite Spring, with magic breath, and releases the bonds of the river and softens our stiff bodies, still alive, resilient, resistant. Man tumbles us into the river. The Roaring Monarch is to bear us to his place of confinement and labour, as he did Jack Hemlock and Prince Pine. Long before I come to the place called The Mills. I hear the savage snarl of the Saws, a manmade beast. Some of my brothers cry out, in watersoaked voices, but I hold my peace, secure in my belief in destiny. Man harries and stabs us with hooks and pikes, as they hurry us down stream and drag us out and pile us on cars that run on steel tracks—royal carriage for a royal line. Sound of the Saws, roaring with metallic hunger, rings in our ears. We are dumped on a carriage fashioned of the body of Jack Hemlock! Then, with exquisite tearing pain, the teeth rip flesh and ent through me ; and now I become less an entity than a confusion of particles,

yet retain the unity of those strong, fibrous muscles. Yes, even beneath the driving, splitting crash of steel machines that tear us apart, rip our skin, sharp knives that mangle and macerate, we keep our unity. We are of the royal line. Fiery smells speak of hot torture, and soon we are being cooked in a cauldron, in biting chemicals, until our bodies are a soft mass —pulp, they call it—these men. It is our fibres, clinging intact! Out of the cauldron we come; enter vats ; are beaten, pounded, mangled, and bitten by more chemicals that turn us pale, but we cling together, invincible, unconquerable. save bv Fire, alive. Between rolls of wood that squeeze from us our life-blood, but also rid us of stinking chemicals, 10, we emerge, a beautiful, soft sheet of white! Dry Pulp, men call us. With careless, irreverent hands they bend and fold us and on trucks send us to another mill; and then again the vats, the biting chemicals, the squeezing rolls; and thus are we doubly refined; and still we cling tenaciously to life, and again become a long white sheet; but now men speak -no longer of us as Pulp. They use another name, with tones of deep respect and admiration, and I know my destiny is being fulfilled. Paper, they call us now—White Paper, News Print. They speak of “the splendid fibres of King Spruce” ; how tough and smooth is the texture of the great white log into which our fibres, all straightened, bleached, and pressed flat, are being wound—a white log as large as my majestic trunk as it stood in the forest! I, Slim Spruce, have become White Paper, News Print; and here you have me, with mv life history written upon my own tough, living fibres, and my noble destiny is fulfilled.