It was in the old days.  
There were no towns with houses and streets and towering church-steeples. There were no schools. For there were not many boys; and those there were learnt from their fathers to shoot with a bow and arrow, to hunt the deer in his hiding-place, to kill the bear in order to make clothes of his skin and to get fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together. When they knew all this , their education was completed.
 
Nor were there any railways, or tilled fields, or ships on the sea, or books, for there was nobody who could read them.
 
There was hardly anything but trees.
 
But then of trees there were plenty. They stood everywhere from coast to coast, mirrored themselves in every river and lake and stretched their branches up into the............