I'll bring it back when he finishes." Father folded the paper and handed it to Laddie, who slipped it in his pocket.
"Take the finest branch you can select," father said, and I almost fell over.
He had carried those trees from Ohio, before I had been born, and mother said for years he wrapped them in her shawl in winter and held an umbrella over them in summer, and father always went red and grinned when she told it.

He was wild about trees, and bushes, so he made up his mind he'd have chestnuts.

He planted them one place, and if they didn't like it, he dug them up and set them another where he thought they could have what they needed and hadn't got the last place.
Finally, he put them, on the fourth move, on a little sandy ridge across the road from the wood yard, and that was the spot.

They shot up, branched, spread, and one was a male and two were females, so the pollen flew, the burrs filled right, and we had a bag of chestnuts to send each child away from home, every Christmas.

The brown leaves and burrs were so lovely, mother cut one of the finest branches she could select and hung it above the steel engraving of "Lincoln Freeing the Slaves," in the boys' room, and nothing in the house was looked at oftener, or thought prettier.