[The speaker should show to the children a piece of wood torn from a hollow and decaying log.]
There was once a magnificent oak-tree, tall, and beautiful, and strong.
The winds tried to blow it down, but the more they strained its tough fibers, the stouter they grew to hold the great tree up.
The sun beat fiercely down upon it, and did his best to burn it up; but though its leaves withered every autumn, they came out fresh and green every spring.
The frost tried to enter the crevices and split the tree from top to bottom, but all it could do was to make its bark rough and rugged.
Snows tried to bury it, rain tried to drown it, ground dried up and tried to starve its roots, other trees tried to crowd it out, but still the grand old oak stood there, winter and summer, and defied all its enemies.
But at last, one unlucky day, a little worm crept into the heart of the tree. It laid its eggs there, and died. Soon there were a dozen worms, and more. They ate a little way into the tree, laid their eggs, and died. Then there were hundreds, and these all ate a little way into the tree, and laid their eggs, and died. So it went on until the heart of the tree was eaten up, and it was hardly anything but a hollow trunk.
Then the branches fell off, one by one. Then the roots dried up. Then the few leaves withered, and none came to take their places. Then the frost got in, and the ice split the great trunk open. And at last the wind blew the tall tree over, and it rotted to pieces among its own dead leaves.
So the greatest enemy of the oak-tree was not the wind, or the rain, or the frost, or the sun, or the soil, but the little worm that it took into its heart, and made a part of itself.