The short story "What the Old Maple Said" was published in 1884 and is a beautiful folklore work. It tells the story of an old maple tree that witnessed many important events on the farm. Every spring, it saw the farmers planting seeds, and every autumn, it watched them harvesting crops. The old maple tree followed the lives of generations of people living nearby and tried to find the answer to the question of how the life of a tree is connected to the life of a human.