158 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
be obliged to import the timber for the last, hereafter, 
or splice such sticks as we have; —and our ideas of 
liberty are equally mean with these. The very willow- 
rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder,— 
and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, 
cut down within the memory of man! As if individual 
speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out 
of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by 
one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of 
the earth for nutriment. 
They have even descended to smaller game. They 
have lately, as I hear, invented a machine for chopping 
up huckleberry-bushes fine, and so converting them into 
fuel! — bushes which, for fruit alone, are worth all the 
pear-trees in the country many times over. (I can give 
you a list of the three best kinds, if you want it.) At 
this rate, we shall all be obliged to let our beards grow 
at least, if only to hide the nakedness of the land and 
make a sylvan appearance. The farmer sometimes talks 
of “brushing up,” simply as if bare ground looked 
better than clothed ground, than that which wears its 
natural vesture, — as if the wild hedges, which, perhaps, 
are more to his children than his whole farm beside, 
were dirt. I know of one who deserves to be called 
the Tree-hater, and, perhaps, to leave this for a new 
patronymic to his children. You would think that he 
had been warned by an oracle that he would be killed 
by the fall of a tree, and so was resolved to anticipate 
them. The journalists think that they cannot say too 
much in favor of such “ improvements ” in husbandry; 
it is a safe theme, like piety; but as for the beauty of 
one of these “model farms,” I would as lief see a 
patent churn and a man turning it. They are, com- 
