The Aged Tree

An aged tree, whose companions had gone, having still a little sap in its bark and a few leaves which grew therefrom, prayed it might see yet another spring.  Its prayer was granted: and spring came, but the old tree had no leaves save one or two near the ground, and a great fungus fixed itself on its trunk.  It had a dull life in its roots, but not enough to know that its moss and fungus were not foliage.  It stood there, an unlovely mass of decay, when the young trees were all bursting.  “That rotten thing,” said the master, “ought to have been cut down long ago.”