Behind the Backlog 



because of lack of transportation and 

 a market. There came a time one day, 

 however, in the national life when a 

 bridge of ships across the sea had to be 

 builded quickly lest a world revert to 

 a barbarism worse than that which 

 had once burned captives at the stake 

 in these same Ohio forest clearings; a 

 time when all this slaughtered timber 

 would have helped to win the greatest 

 battle of the ages! However, nothing 

 in nature is ever altogether lost, and 

 so it comes to pass in the fullness of 

 the years that the dust of trees thus 

 wantonly destroyed in days lang syne 

 helps to sustain at last the meadows, 

 fields and gardens now contributing 

 to a Nation's harvest. 



Descended as I am in all lines from 

 these log-rolling, rail-splitting Virgin- 

 ians who opened up the virgin forests 

 of the Appalachian slopes, is it any 

 wonder that it has always seemed to 

 me that a home that has not the glow- 

 ing back-log for its background is no 



[23] 



