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surveys. Already an airplane has been in 

 use to search out forest fires. 



PLAYING at war has been just as much 

 a game for boys as dolls have been 

 for girls. It was always a part of 

 youth to fight battles of one sort or 

 another, real and unreal. This year our 

 boys have helped in real war by fighting 

 weeds in home gardens. Maybe this thought 

 has made weeding easier than I found it. 

 Ho^ in hand, to keep down the weed ene- 

 mies, sounds very well these days. It was 

 hard work as I look back on it, and I find 

 that Everett and Toto will work till they 

 are ready to drop, digging rows of trenches 

 all over the place, but rows of onions to 

 weed are not so good. 



Boys are about the same, I guess, no mat- 

 ter what the time or place. 



THERE was some fun, as I recall, in go- 

 ing miles over the fields after the 

 mail, carrying a limber switch by way 

 of a sword, and lopping off the heads 

 of wild carrots and daisies that grew along 

 the wayside, exclaiming, "Die, villain!" as 

 the blossom heads dropped. The lumbering 

 grasshoppers, flying up thick, were the bul- 

 lets of the enemy; if one struck the hero's 

 right arm he would have to transfer his 

 sword to the left and keep up the fight; if 

 he were struck in the leg he would have to 

 hop along as best he could on one, trusting 

 that it would heal before both pins were 

 gone. If a grasshopper bullet struck him 

 over the heart he just had to go to the hos- 

 pital in a neighboring fence corner and find 

 some slippery elm or blackberry medicine 

 until he was cured of his wound- The folks 



at home used to have to wait a long time 

 for the mail on these days of battle; and 

 it must be owned that the hurts received 

 when the hero returned home were more 

 serious than the ones he got in combat. 

 I suppose all this has been changed by the 

 rural free delivery, and the small boys of 

 the present day do not have the perfectly 

 good excuse of going after the mail to get 

 them out of the job of weeding the onions. 



BUT that is not what I started to write 

 in the beginning. It was rather to 

 call attention to the great need of 

 wood, and the greater need, while we 

 still have the chance, to see that there shall 

 always be plenty. The wooden sword and 

 the wooden toy gun may go out of fashion. 

 I hope they will, just as I hope this strug- 

 gle will prove to be the War for Peace. But 

 wood will never be less useful; and when 

 I see it going into so many new things, 

 such as airplanes, I know that man will 

 need it and use it even more in the future 

 than he has in the past. 



When the Walrus and the Carpenter, on 

 that well-known walk, spoke of many things, 

 such as "shoes and ships and sealing wax," 

 they did not get very far away from wood. 

 Because shoes must be made on wooden 

 lasts, and many are pegged with wood, the 

 leather is tanned from an extract of tree 

 bark; in Holland boys and girls wear 

 whole wooden shoes- Ai d as for ships, we 

 know they are made from wood, and even 

 the iron ones have wooden masts and spars. 

 When it comes to sealing wax, the hardened 

 eum of the pine tree, known as rosin, we are 

 in the very heart of the use of wood. Let's 

 keep it growing! 



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