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Updated: July 20, 2025
"You see, I take a block of straight-grained pine and cut out the shape, roughly at first, with the big blade; then I go over it a second time with the little blade, more carefully; then I put in the ears and tail with a drop of glue, and paint it with a 'non-poisonous' paint Vandyke brown for the horses, foxes, and cows; slate gray for the elephants and camels; burnt umber for the chickens, zebras, and so on; then, last, a dot of Chinese white for the eyes, and there you are, all finished.
"Give me that axe!" she said impatiently to Cameron, who was preparing to split the block. With a few strong and skillful blows she split the straight-grained block of wood into firewood, gathered up the sticks in her arms, and, with a giggle, turned toward the house. "I won't charge you anything for that lesson," she said, "but you'll have to hustle if you git that wood split 'fore breakfast."
Allowing nothing for waste, there are about fifty matches to the cubic inch of wood, or 86,400 to the cubic foot, making in all upwards of 230,000 cubic feet, and, as only straight-grained wood, free from knots, can be used for this purpose, the sacrifice of not less than three or four thousand well-grown pines is required for this purpose.
What simplifies life is to have a single, specific direction in which to grow, a straight-grained, definite intention, the possibility of a straightforward life. The scattered, divergent, wavering life, what is this but what we call the dissipating career? It abandons self-concentration and steadiness; it dissipates its energy.
This is the source of some of its most valuable properties. It makes the wood straight-grained. That is, the fibres run smooth and regularly, from one end of the stem to the other." Just at this time, Forester saw a large pine tree growing alone, by the side of the road they were travelling.
The timber or the European species, when straight-grained, and clear, or free from knots, is, for ordinary purposes, better than that of the American black walnut, but bears no comparison with the wood of the hickory, when strength combined with elasticity is required, and its nut is very inferior in taste to that of the shagbark, as well as to the butternut, which it somewhat resembles.
It was now Pretty who came to him for the advance of cash enough to buy a walking-stick of the following superb description: a thoroughly even, straight-grained bit of hickory-wood, tapered like a billiard-cue, an inch and a half thick at the butt and three fourths of an inch thick at the point, the butt carrying a knob of silver, and the point heavily ferruled.
But in pine, it is not beauty, but facility of working, which is the great object. So they always want to get pine as smooth and straight-grained as possible. So that one of these trees that grow detached, in the fields, would not be of much value for lumber. It has so many branches, that the boards made from it would be full of knots."
There was a large heap of chips and shavings about it. "What can this be?" asked Marco. "I presume," said Forester, "that it is an old shingle weaver's establishment." "What is a shingle weaver?" asked Marco. "A man who makes shingles," replied Forester, "such as they use for covering houses. They make them of clear straight-grained pine, which will split easily and true."
You see, where there weren't sliprails handy we'd just take the tomahawk and nick the top of a straight-grained fence-post, just above the mortise, knock out the wood there, lift the top rail out and down, and jump the horses in over the lower one it was all two-rail fences around there with sheep wires under the lower rail.
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