COUNTRY COUSINS. 



i. 



MY FIRST TREE-CHOPPING. 



I HAVE cut down my first big tree to-day, and am the possessor of 

 my first axe. These two important events came about in this way: 

 Opposite my house is a small grove of splendid trees. One of them, a 

 fine, large, red oak, was badly decayed near the roots, and would surely 

 fall in some high wind next winter. So my neighbor, who is never so 

 happy as when he can get me hard at work out-of-doors, said he would 

 give me the tree for three dollars, if I would cut it down and bring it 

 across to my own domain without asking any help. 



" I suspect there are three cords of wood in that tree," said the Doctor, 

 "and I'll lend you an axe." 



I accepted, and this afternoon we went at it. 



"I guess we'd better grind the axe a bit," the Doctor remarked, finger- 

 ing its already keen edge. "A good woodsman always minds that his 

 axe is sharp. I knew a man once who would chop four cords of wood a 

 day all winter long; he never wasted a blow, and each time he struck 

 he half buried his axe, but it was ground every day." 



Accordingly, I turned the grindstone behind the barn while the Doc- 

 tor, in his great green dressing-gown and New Hampshire moccasins, 

 held the axe. By-and-by I began to think he was too scrupulous about 

 that edge,, and hinted as much. 



"Do you remember Franklin's story about the speckled axe? It is 

 in one of his early letters." 



I did not, and the Doctor repeated it. He pointed no moral — he is 

 not the kind of a man to do that — but I kept on turning in silence until 

 he brought the edge to his idea of perfection. Then he swung, it through 

 the weeds, and it cut them off as a new sickle might have done. 



