"I am old Philemon," murmured the oak....

Of course you know the old story of Baucis and Philemon, the poor couple who, when Zeus and Hermes were visiting Earth, took them in when no other household would. Miraculously, there was no end to the food and drink that night. At the end of the visit, in thanks for their generosity, the gods asked them what they might wish. They simply asked, "At the end of our lives, may we depart this world together." So was it willed. When they died at the very same moment, they were transformed into an oak and a linden, their branches intertwining. Artist: the great British illustrator Arthur Rackham, c. 1922, in The Wonder Book for Boys and Girls.