14 AN UNGOVERNABLE AXE. 



The tree was nearly eight feet in circumference, where I was to cut 

 it, close to the ground. It was straight, and pretty tall, but leaned well 

 out over some low, clear ground, upon which I proposed to drop it, or 

 " fall it," as most lumbermen would say, in a confusion of the verbs " to 

 fell" and "to fall." On that side it was very solid, but on the upper 

 side a deep cavity had been eaten in, which I thought would lessen my 

 labor immensely. 



Laying aside my eoat, I struck a blow at the tough bark ; the axe 

 sank deeply through it into the white sap-wood. A second, and a triangu- 

 lar chip flew out, while a flicker, uttering his shrill, healthy cry, darted 

 from the topmost limb in sudden fright. A third blow easily dislodged 

 a great yellow fragment and seemed to make a big gap. 



" Why, this is fun 1" I said to myself. " I'll have it down in a few 

 minutes." 



But as I got farther into the brown heart-wood the chips grew smaller, 

 and the constantly broadening cut seemed to deepen very slowly. Half 

 an hour passed, and there was no sign of a tremble in the tree, or appar- 

 ent approach to the hollow heart on which I had counted to help me. It 

 was a cool September day, but the perspiration had by this time started 

 plentifully, and I divested myself of collar and waistcoat. The Doctor 

 lay stretched on the grass near by, his bushy gray head strongly printed 

 against a splendid clump of golden-rod. 



"Go on," he said, "you've done the worst of it. You've got lines to 

 guide your axe now !" 



It seemed to me that I needed something more than those lines to 

 make my strokes go true. Nearly half the blows were wasted, becaiise I 

 could not hit precisely what I aimed at.' Growing nervous, my axe 

 once shied off and came within a hair's-breadth of laying open my foot. 

 With a sardonic grin the Doctor came to my assistance, and with practised 

 hand cleared up some of the hackings with which I had disfigured the 

 stump. 



" I had an uncle," he said, pausing after a little, " who was a famous 

 chopper up in the Mohawk Valley. When he was past seventy, he had 

 a man working for him who thought himself pretty smart, and my uncle 

 offered to 'butt' him." 



"What's that?" I interrupted, thinking of negroes and rams. 



"In 'butting,' a man proposes to cut off the butt end of a prostrate 

 tree-trunk while his rival is cutting through the diminished diameter at 

 the upper end of a log's length. My uncle beat the workman, in spite 

 of his three score and ten." 



