ous and hideous, and was not
frequently practised. A chopping-bee was a universal method among
pioneers of clearing ground in newly settled districts, or even in older
townships in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, where great tracts of
land were left for many years in the original growth. Sometimes this bee
was held to clear land for a newly married man, or a new neighbor, or
one who had had bad luck; but it was just as freely given to a
prosperous farmer, though plentiful thanks and plentiful rum were the
only rewards of the willing workers.

All the strong men of the township repaired at an early hour to the
tract to be cleared, and with powerful blows attacked the great trees. A
favorite way of bringing the day's work and the day's excitement to a
climax was by a "drive." This was made by chopping half-way into the
trunks of a great group or circle of trees--under-cutting it was
called--so that by a few powerful and well-driven blows at the monarch
of the group, and perhaps a few well-concerted pulls on a rope, the
entire group could be felled together, the leader bringing down with his
spreading branches in his mighty fall his fellows in front of him, and
they in turn their neighbors, with a crash that shook the earth and made
the mountains ring. It was dangerous work; accidents were frequent; the
records of death at log-rollings are pathetic to read and to think of,
in a country where the loss of a sturdy man meant so much to some
struggling household. A heavy and sudden gust of wind might blow down a
small tree, which had been carelessly "under-cut," and thus give an
unexpected and premature collapse of the simple machinery of the grand
finale.

A century ago a New Hampshire woman and her husband went out into the
forest primeval; he cut down a few trees, made a little clearing termed
a cut-down wherein a tiny patch of sky and cloud and scant sunlight
could be seen overhead, but no sunrise or sunset, and built a log house
of a single room--a home. With the opening spring came one day a group
of kindly settlers from distant clearings and settlements, some riding
from ten miles away the previous day. In front of the log house they
chopped all the morning long with sturdy arms and swinging blows, yet
felled nothing, till in the afternoon when all was ready for the final
blow at the towering leader, which by its fall should lay low a great
sloping tract for a dooryard and home field. As the noble trees fell at
las