It was an early summer day, warm and breezy, and a young oak tree was telling the other trees in the grove about how it had come to be planted.
“I was once a little acorn,” it said, “and a boy picked me up and put me in his pocket. I spent a great deal of time sleeping — his pocket was very dark, and dark makes one drowsy. After a while he had quite forgotten why he’d wanted to keep me, but one day he took me out, looked at me carefully, and decided to plant me.
“He dug a small hole and set me in carefully and covered me up, and then he watched the ground every day, waiting to see if I would come up. When my first shoot appeared above the soil, he was overjoyed — I thought he might burst with delight. He had been worried about me, you see.
“He still comes to look at me every day.
“I think having his pride in me will make me grow into a fine tree. And I believe that tending something and watching it grow will make him a fine man — he calls me his tree, you know, and tries to grow up strong like it. And perhaps when he is old, he will bring a small boy by the hand and tell him about the acorn he once planted, and that will do some good to the small boy too.
“A tree can do a great deal of good, if it grows in the right place.”
