nd act the part of Arnold Winkelried without
intending it. If he should invite one of his town friends up this way,
suggesting moose-meat and unlimited freedom, the latter might pertinently
inquire, "What is that sticking in your nose?" When a generation or two
have used up all the enemies' darts, their successors lead a comparatively
easy life. We owe to our fathers analogous blessings. Many old people
receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a
compensation for having lived a long time ago. No doubt, our town dogs
still talk, in a snuffling way, about the days that tried dogs' noses. How
they got a cat up there I do not know, for they are as shy as my aunt
about entering a canoe. I wondered that she did not run up a tree on the
way; but perhaps she was bewildered by the very crowd of opportunities.

Twenty or thirty lumberers, Yankee and Canadian, were coming and going,--
Aleck among the rest,--and from time to time an Indian touched here. In
the winter there are sometimes a hundred men lodged here at once. The most
interesting piece of news that circulated among them appeared to be, that
four horses belonging to Smith, worth seven hundred dollars, had passed by
further into the woods a week before.

The white-pine-tree was at the bottom or further end of all this. It is a
war against the pines, the only real Aroostook or Penobscot war. I have no
doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric
age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as
now, their minds ran chiefly on the "hot bread and sweet cakes"; and the
fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe. I doubt if men
ever made a trade of heroism. In the days of Achilles, even, they
delighted in big barns, and perchance in pressed hay, and he who possessed
the most valuable team was the best fellow.

We had designed to go on at evening up the Caucomgomoc, whose mouth was a
mile or two distant, to the lake of the same name, about ten miles off;
but some Indians of Joe's acquaintance, who were making canoes on the
Caucomgomoc, came over from that side, and gave so poor an account of the
moose-hunting, so many had been killed there lately, that my companions
concluded not to go there. Joe spent this Sunday and the night with his
acquaintances. The lumberers told me that there were many moose
hereabouts, but no caribou or deer. A man from Oldtown had killed ten or
twelve moose, within a y