When we came to the place, we found Master Simon and several others
standing about a tall and beautifully straight young tree, which had
just been felled.
The Squire, though a man of most harmonious dispositions, was
completely put out of tune by this circumstance. He felt like a
monarch witnessing the murder of one of his liege subjects, and
demanded, with some asperity, the meaning of the outrage. It turned
out to be an affair of Master Simon's, who had selected the tree, from
its height and straightness, for a May-pole, the old one which stood
on the village green being unfit for farther service. If any thing
could have soothed the ire of my worthy host, it would have been the
reflection that his tree had fallen for so good a cause; and I saw
that there was a great struggle between his fondness for his groves,
and his devotion to May-day. He could not contemplate the prostrate
tree, however, without indulging in lamentation, and making a kind of
funeral eulogy, like Mark Antony over the body of Caesar; and he
forbade that any tree should thenceforward be cut down on his estate,
without a warrant from himself; being determined, he said, to hold the
sovereign power of life and death in his own hands.
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