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the: story or the: oak treje: 
A forest trail! Modern city folks have forgotten what 
that really means. Often it was not even a footpath, just 
a number of landmarks the traveler must look sharp to 
find,—a queerly shaped rock, a dead tree, a spring. 
Even to-day the natives of our northern forest lands 
are terrified at the thought of losing themselves in the 
woods. If a man is lost in the forest for more than 
three days they say he will go crazy. Of course, he will 
get well when he is found, but for a time he will have 
had a very dreadful sensation. Not cold, not hunger 
oppressed him so much as loneliness; about him on ail 
sides stretched the trees in endless, gloomy ranks; not a 
friendly sound could his straining ears catch, only the 
call of strange birds and the rustle of the thicket as 
some startled beast leaped out and away. 
No wonder our forefathers learned to wield an axe, 
no wonder each felled tree to them meant victory! 
The Yankee axe is the finest in all the world. Its 
head is forged of sharpest steel, its handle of toughest 
hickory—a tree, by the way, which grows only in 
America. And if the Yankee axe takes first prize, so 
does the Yankee woodsman; the sons and grandsons of 
our hardy pioneers an axe as an Italian wields his 
stone-cutting tools, with strength and skill. 
We are proud of these backwoods forefathers of 
ours. They were strong and brave and ambitious; noth- 
