Before the sugar pine came up in the meadow of Bright Water it had swung a summer long in the burnished¹ cone² of the parent tree, until the wind lifted it softly to the earth where it swelled³ with the snow water and the sun, and began to grow into a tree. But it knew nothing whatever of itself except that it was alive and growing; and in its first season was hardly so tall as the Little Grass of Parnassus that crowded the sod at the Bright Water. In fact, it was a number of years before it began to overtop the meadowsweet, the fireweed, the tall lilies, the monkshood, and columbine, and under these circumstances it could not be expected to have much of an opinion of itself.  
During those years the young pine suffered a secret mortification⁴ because it had no flowers. It stood stiff and trimly in its plain dark green, every needle like every other one, and no honey-gatherer visited it. When all the meadow ran over with rosy⁵ and purple bloom, the pine tree trembled and beads⁶ of clear resin⁷ oozed⁸ out upon its bark like tears; and the trouble really seemed worse than it was because everybody made so much of it. Even the hummingbirds⁹ as they came hurtling through the air would draw back conspicuously¹⁰ when they came to the pine, and though they said politely, "I beg your pardon, I took you for a flower," the seedling¹¹ felt it would have been better had they said nothing at all.
 
"Well, why don't you grow flowers?" said the meadowsweet; "it is easy enough. Just do as I do," and she spread her drift of blossoms like a fragrant¹² snow. But the sugar pine found it impossible to be anything but stiff and plainly green, though every year in the stir and tingle¹³ of new sap he felt a promise of better things.
 
"I suppose," he said one day, "I must be in some way different from the rest of you."
 
"Ah, that is the way with you solemn people," said the fireweed, "always imagining yourself better than those about you to excuse your disagreeableness. Any one can see by the way you hold yourself that you have too much of an opinion of yourself."
 
The little pine tree sighed; he had not said "better," only "different," and he began to realize year by year that this was so.
 
"You should try to be natural," said the meadowsweet; "do not be so stiff, and then every one will love you though you are so plain."
 
Then the sugar pine reached out and tried to mingle¹⁴ with the flowers, but the sharp needles tore their frills and the stiff branches did not suit with their graceful¹⁵ swaying, so he was obliged to give it up. It seemed, in fact, the more he tried to be like the others the worse he grew.
 
"If only you were not so odd," said all the flowers. None of the young growing things in the meadow understood that it is natural for a pine tree to be stiff.
 
The sugar pine was not always unhappy. There were days when he caught golden glints of the stream that ran smoothly¹⁶ about the meadow, in a bed of leopard-colored stones, and, reflecting all the light that fell into the hollow of the hills, gave the place its name; days when the air was warm and the sky was purely¹⁷ blue, and the resinous¹⁸ smell of the pines on the meadow border came to the seedling like a sweet savor¹⁹ in a dream, for as yet he did not understand what he was to be. He was pleased just to be looking at the summer riot of the flowering things, and loved the cool softness of the snow when he was tucked into comfortable darkness to dream of the spring odor of the pines. Then, when it seemed that the meadow had forgotten him, the little tree would fall to thinking the thoughts proper to his kind, and found the time pass pleasantly.
 
"I suppose," he thought, "it is not good for me to flower as the other plants. If I began like them I should probably end like them, and I feel that I could not be satisfied with that. After all, one should not try to be so much like others, but to be the very best of one's own sort."
 
Very early the young tree had noticed that he was the only one of all that company that kept green and growing the winter through. He would have been secretly very proud of it, but the flowers took good care to let him know their opinion of such airs.
 
"It is simply that you wish to be considered peculiar," said the columbine; "one sees that you like nothing so much as to be in other people's mouths, but let me tell you, you will not get yourself any better liked by such behavior." After that the little tree wished nothing so much as that he might be the commonest summer-flowering weed.
 
"But I am not," he said; "no, I am not, and I would do very well as I am if they would let me be happy in my own way."
 
That summer the seedling grew as tall as the meadowsweet, and could look across the open space to the parent pine

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