Perhaps the building is insured for its positive value, and the insurance money would erect a better one.

But lift an axe upon that tall centurion of these templed elms.

Cut through the closely-grained rings that register each succeeding year of two centuries.

Hear the peculiar sounding of the heart-strokes, when the lofty, well-poised structure is balancing itself, and quivering through every fibre and leaf and twig on the few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt the keen edge of the woodman's steel.

See the first leaning it cannot recover.