point of death," said Rousseau, "carry me
under the shade of an oak and I am persuaded I shall recover."

David was a lover of trees. From the summits of the hills he had often
gazed down upon the forests and observed how "all the tree tops lay
asleep like green waves on the sea." He had harvested the fruits of the
apple and peach, clubbed the branches of the walnut, butternut and
beach, and boiled the sap of the maple. He had seen the trees offer
their hospitable shelter to the birds and the squirrels, had basked
beneath their umbrageous shadows and had listened to their whispers in
the summer, and to their wild music "when winter, that grand old harper,
smote his thunder-harp of pines."

It cost him pain to lay violent hands on a thing so sacred; nevertheless
he swung his axe in the air and a loud reverberating blow broke the
immense solitude. There are many kinds of music; but there is none
fuller of life and power and primal energy than the ring of the
woodsman's axe as blow after blow, through hour after hour, falls
rhythmically upon the wound which he cuts in the great hole of a forest
monarch.

The gash deepened and widened, the chips flew in showers and the
woodchopper's craft, long unpracticed, came back to him with every
stroke. The satisfying consciousness of skill and power filled him with
a sort of ecstasy. Just as the sun reached the zenith and looked down to
see what devastation was being wrought in this solitude, the giant
trembled; the blade had struck a vital place; he reeled, leaned forward,
lurched, plunged headlong, and with a roar that resounded through the
wide reaches of the forest, fell prone upon the ground.

The woodsman wiped the perspiration from his brow and smiled. The
appetite of the pioneer had been whetted with his work. He kindled a
fire, boiled a pot of coffee, fried a half dozen slices of bacon,
remembered his sickly appetite in the luxurious restaurants of great
cities, and laughed aloud for joy--wild, unbounded joy--the joy of
primitive manhood, of health, of strength, of hope. And then he
stretched himself on the ground and looked up into the blue sky through
the opening he had made in the green canopy above him and through which
the sun was gazing with bold, free glances on the face of the modest
valley and whispering amorously of its love.

Those glances fell soft and warm on his own upturned countenance, and
the rays of life-giving power penetrated the inmost core of his b