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The Man Whom the Trees Loved
Project Gutenberg's The Man Whom the Trees Loved, by Algernon Blackwood This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Man Whom the Trees Loved
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Release Date: February 29, 2004 [EBook #11377]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE MAN
WHOM THE TREES LOVED
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
1912
I He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favorite lime or silver birch, for he caught the individuality of a tree as some catch the individuality of a horse. How he managed it was something of a puzzle, for he never had painting lessons, his drawing was often wildly inaccurate, and, while his perception of a Tree Personality was true and vivid, his rendering of it might almost approach the ludicrous. Yet the character and personality of that particular tree stood there alive beneath his brush--shining, frowning, dreaming, as the case might be, friendly or hostile, good or evil. It emerged.
There was nothing else in the wide world that he could paint;