noon
Provincialism has no _ scale _ of excellence in man or vegetable ; it never knows a first-rate article of either kind when it has it , and is constantly taking second and third rate ones for Nature 's best . I have often fancied the tree was afraid of me , and that a sort of shiver came over it as over a betrothed maiden when she first stands before the unknown to whom she has been plighted . Before the measuring-tape the proudest tree of them all quails and shrinks into itself . All those stories of four or five men stretching their arms around it and not touching each other 's fingers , if one 's pacing the shadow at noon and making it so many hundred feet , die upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awful ribbon which has strangled so many false pretensions . As I rode along the pleasant way , watching eagerly for the object of my journey , the rounded tops of the elms rose from time to time at the road-side . Wherever one looked taller and fuller than the rest , I asked myself , -- `` Is this it ? '' But as I drew nearer , they grew smaller , -- or it proved , perhaps , that two standing in a line had looked like one , and so deceived me .