After running, closely pursued by the
eager Delphian, for several miles, and becoming very much fatigued, she
felt inclined to yield: but wishing to faint in a reputable manner, she
lifted up her hands and asked the gods to help her. Her call was heard
in a jiffy, and quicker than you could say, "Presto: change!" she was a
Laurel-tree, which Phoebus married on the spot. This was the Eve of the
Laurel family, so that all these trees you meet in the world at present
must be rational beings, since they are the descendants of the beautiful
Greek maiden Daphne. And to satisfy you that this is no foolish legend,
but, on the contrary, a well-authenticated fact, clinched and riveted
in the boiler-head of historical truth, permit me to assure you,--for I
have seen it myself,--that in the Villa Borghese, near Rome in Italy,
is an exact representation of the wonderful incident, cut in Carrara
marble,--the bark of the Laurel growing over the vanishing girl, and her
hands and fingers sprouting into branches and leaves,--supposed to
have been copied from a photograph taken on the spot,--for there is a
photograph in existence exactly like the marble statue.
We know positively--for we have an equally minute account of the
transaction--that the Cypress originated in a similar way. And is it
not reasonable to infer, therefore, though we may not find the facts
stated in _every_ case, that all trees were created out of men and
women, their bodies being miraculously clothed in woody tissue? In the
time of Virgil this was certainly the established orthodox belief; for
he relates an anecdote, expressing no doubt whatever of its truth, of a
party of travellers who commenced one day in a forest the indiscriminate
destruction of some young trees, when their roots forthwith began
to bleed, and voices proceeded from them, begging to be spared from
laceration.
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