CHAPTER VII 
HORACE HAS AN ADVENTURE 
Horace, it was plain, however the others felt, highly 
approved of his new position on the baseline. He 
went at his task zestfully, bearing his axe aloft as if 
it had been a sceptre, and attacking trees and brush 
with a headlong fury that threatened annihilation to 
the forest. What mattered it that the swath he 
cleared through the woods was yards off the line, or 
if he at times dwelt so long upon the beautifying 
of a station monument that his companions were 
half a mile ahead before he finished. Horace was 
having a lovely time; that was sufficient. 
We wouldn’t have minded this attitude—those of 
us, that is, who were not working on the baseline— 
if Horace had only kept his peculiar ideas to him- 
self. But he displayed a sort of irritating air of 
superiority about camp which irked us considerably. 
Personal foibles which one can tolerate or dismiss 
with a laugh in town assume entirely different pro- 
portions in the woods. Conceit or egotism—any 
trait, in fact, which tends to infringe upon another’s 
personality—acts with the cumulative force of drop- 
ping water. Before long the most adamantine self- 
control is worn away in the process. 
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