ADVENTURES WITH AN AX 299 



The meaning of my task! How clear it is to me 

 as I emerge from the now chilling shadow of the 

 birch- wood edge into the paler shadow of the moun- 

 tain shoulder as it falls across the pasture ledges, 

 across the plain, and begins slowly to climb the 

 wave-line of the eastern hills, dreaming now in 



amethyst! Just at my feet, down a quarter of a 

 mile of snow-rippled slope, at the head of its naked 

 orchard beside the road, sits a red-brick house. 

 Within that house are eight fireplaces. There are 

 stoves and a furnace, besides, but they are of second- 

 ary interest. There are eight hearths to dance 

 and glow, and it is my ax which feeds them. Buy- 

 ing coal, mined for you by others, is prosaic at best, 

 and nowadays, for some of us, not always easy. 

 But going up your mountain to your own wood-lot, 

 and with your own arms swinging the gleaming ax 

 that fells you twenty cords of wood on the crisp 

 days of winter, to season against the coming of the 



