The Forest and Man 47 



Inaugural, which will ever remain among the most 

 cherished words of human speech, who can tell how 

 much of the pathos, devotion, strength, faith, and 

 love dwelling therein had its birth from the forest 

 influences that surrounded the youth in his father's 

 cabin ? Who will say that we exaggerate in main- 

 taining that to the primeval woods, to the manner 

 in which their strength and ruggedness, as well as 

 their silent, tender workings, were mirrored in the 

 minds and hearts of the men growing up in their 

 shade, we owe that which makes us a people stand- 

 ing unique in the world's eyes, with an individuality 

 and character all our own, for good and evil, not 

 a mere feeble counterfeit of European models ? 

 Surely, if there were no reasons of practical utility 

 and worldly prudence to make us care assiduously 

 for what remains of our forest inheritance, it would 

 behoove an American to give his best skill and en- 

 deavor to its protection out of gratitude for having 

 moulded the men who first cast off the shackles of 

 sectional narrowness and dependence on colonial 

 tradition. 



The task of opening the wilderness to white 

 settlement, which had been the work of two gen- 

 erations of backwoodsmen, had, in effect, been 

 accomplished when, after the second British war, 

 the power of the Indians was broken. Henceforth 

 it was no longer necessary for the adventurous set- 

 tler to have his rifle in readiness while he wielded 

 the axe. The hearts of the women in their lonely 

 cabins no longer trembled at every noise which 



