This time it
is Lincoln green, too. Till the sun got low, I did not believe that
there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Theirs is an intense
burning red, which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every
step you might take toward them; for the shade that lurks amid their
foliage does not report itself at this distance, and they are
unanimously red. The focus of their reflected color is in the atmosphere
far on this side. Every such tree becomes a nucleus of red, as it were,
where, with the declining sun, that color grows and glows. It is partly
borrowed fire, gathering strength from the sun on its way to your eye.
It has only some comparatively dull red leaves for a rallying-point, or
kindling-stuff, to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red
mist, or fire, which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. So
vivacious is redness. The very rails reflect a rosy light at this hour
and season. You see a redder tree than exists.
If you wish to count the Scarlet Oaks, do it now. In a clear day stand
thus on a hill-top in the woods, when the sun is an hour high, and every
one within range of your vision, excepting in the west, will be
revealed. You might live to the age of Methuselah and never find a tithe
of them, otherwise. Yet sometimes even in a dark day I have thought them
as bright as I ever saw them.
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