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Updated: July 18, 2025
Or was it only a congregation of wearied wood-choppers, or of proprietors come to inspect their lots, that we thought of? Or, earlier still, when we paddled on the river through that fine-grained September air, did there not appear to be something new going on under the sparkling surface of the stream, a shaking of props, at least, so that we made haste in order to be up in time?
The yawl strives persistently to shake free from the daring creatures who have so far escaped the Africa and the storm. The boy turns on the gunwale, as it were a trapeze. He opens the locker. He finds a tin pie-plate. He bails. Corkey gets in. "Lord of heavens!" he ejaculates, "that was a close call. Them wood-choppers! They was no earthly use." Two hands are yet on the gunwale.
The trick of his rhetoric is soon learned: it consists in substituting for the obvious word and thought its diametrical antagonist. He praises wild mountains and winter forests for their domestic air; snow and ice for their warmth; villagers and wood-choppers for their urbanity, and the wilderness for resembling Rome and Paris.
Early in the last century the hardy wood-choppers began to come west, out of Vermont. They founded their homes in the Adirondack wildernesses and cleared their rough acres with the axe and the charcoal pit. After years of toil in a rigorous climate they left their sons little besides a stumpy farm and a coon-skin overcoat.
And I thought, as I rested my elbows on the window-sill, that these people must have risen before midnight to reach here so early in the morning, and that they must have come over the mountains walking for hours under the trees, crossing the little bridges in the moonlight; as I thought this I reflected that religion is a beautiful thing, that the people in towns do not know what it is, and that for thousands upon thousands of field laborers and wood-choppers, uncultivated and rude beings, who at the same time were good and loved their wives and children and honored their aged parents, supporting them and closing their eyes in the hope of a better world; this was the only consolation.
Through a double onslaught, at once against each human branch and against the entire French forest, the Jacobin wood-choppers seek to clear the ground. Their theory results in this precept, that not one of the noble trees of this forest, not one valuable trunk from the finest oak to the smallest sapling, should be left standing. VII. Principle of socialist Equality.
The early settlers of course had to suffer great hardship even when they reached Kentucky. The only two implements the men invariably carried were the axe and rifle, for they were almost equally proud of their skill as warriors, hunters, and wood-choppers. Next in importance came the sickle or scythe.
The alluvial strip by the Nile, along which we had marched so many days, gave place to ridges and hummocks of sand, gravel, and rock. So we waited impatiently at Um Terif for the flotilla with the fifteen days' supplies on board. Meanwhile the axes of an army of soldier wood-choppers were clanging upon the hard timber, which was being felled for firewood.
There was a wide entrance gate to the old family mansion of Midbranch, but it was never opened to admit the family or visitors; although occasionally a load of wood, drawn by two horses and two mules, came between its tall chestnut posts, and was taken by a roundabout way among the trees to a spot at the back of the house, where the chips of several generations of sturdy wood-choppers had formed a ligneous soil deeper than the arable surface of any portion of the nine hundred and fifty acres which formed the farm of Midbranch.
At noon the wood-choppers returned to the village weary and hungry, for already had the entire company been placed upon half rations of food, so to continue until another cargo should arrive, or the next year's crop be ripe.
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