Axeman

“ THE AXE. Of course a backwoodsman has to be pretty useful with his axe; and to become a good axeman a fellow must know, firstly, how the thing ought to be done, and, secondly, he must then have lots of practice in doing it before he can be considered any good.
Bad workmen complain of their tools, but before starting to work be sure that your tool is a good one.
Your axe should be a "felling" axe, of which the head will weigh nearly three pounds. See that the handle or "helve" is perfectly straight and true in line with the head and the edge. ”

“ We could not carry grindstones about with us, but we carried a small fine file, with which we were able to touch up the edge; and that is what many an old backwoodsman does for his axe, he carries a small file with him.
There is a saying with these men that "you may lend your last dollar to a friend, but never lend him your axe—unless you know that he is a good axeman and will not blunt it."
The tenderfoot will go banging about with an axe, chopping at roots and branches on the ground, and blunting the axe at every stroke on earth and stones ”

“ Also keep your eye aloft to watch for limbs which may break off and come down with sufficient force to disable you; accidents of this kind frequently happen, but seldom or never happen where the axeman uses common sense or due caution. ”

“ There is a joy, too, in the wielding of an axe by strong hands, in swinging it lightly and deftly and driving the blade home, and in the thrill of the yielding shock which passes with each blow from the handle to the fingers that grip it. ”

“ Boys you have now passed through the grammar school of shack making, you are older than you were when you began, you have acquired more skill and more muscle, and it is time to begin to handle the woodsman's axe, to handle it skilfully and to use it as a tool with which to fashion anything from a table to a two-story house. None of you is too young to learn to use the axe. General Grant, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Billy Sunday—all of them could wield an axe by the time they were eight or nine years old and do it without chopping off their toes or splitting any one else's head open. ”

“ Never did I need my strength of body more, nor did the long training of my father come in better play. I made that long rifle-barrel both club and sword, knife and axe in one, striking, thrusting, clubbing, in the mad fury with which desperation bids a man battle for his life. ”

“ An axe to be respected must be sharp and no one who has any ambition to be a pioneer, a sportsman or a scout, should carry a dull axe, or an axe with the edge [227] nicked like a saw blade. It may interest the reader to know that the pencil I am using with which to make these notes was sharpened with my camp axe.
2. No one but a duffer and a chump will use another man's axe without that other man's willing permission.
3. It is as bad form to ask for the loan of a favorite axe as it is to ask for the loan of a sportsman's best gun or pet fishing rod or toothbrush. ”

“ With axe, saw, and auger, by the light of the kitchen fire, he soon made a beetle, that, during the time it lasted,—for he had no iron to hoop it with,—would enable him to strike a harder blow than even a blacksmith's sledge, for it was much heavier, indeed, too heavy for constant use; but a very strong man could swing it for a while, and upon an emergency. He then went down to a brook about an eighth of a mile from the house, for an old axe, kept to save a better one, and to cut ice, in order that the cattle might drink. ”

“ For days in succession the axe had to be used to cut a passage through this exquisite specimen of nature's lattice-work, and then the severed tendrils, furnished as they were with curved spines, and made the plaything of the wind, kept hooking the flesh of the men at work, who were thus subjected to perpetual annoyance. ”

“ Perhaps we shall know ourselves face to face with that which leaps from the throat of the strangled when the rope chokes, which smokes up from the blood of the murdered when the axe falls; that which has been forever hunted, fettered, imprisoned, exiled, executed, and never conquered. ”

“ The men on the river driving down to the booms had stirred her greatest admiration. These supermen with their muscles of iron, with the hearts of lions, and the tongues and habits of beasts of the forest. But they were men, wonderful men for all their savage crudity. So, too, with the transporters and freighters handling sixty-foot logs as though dealing with matchwood. But above all, and before all, the axemen made their appeal. ”

“ At every blow of the axe he made an incision, but only to see it close up when the axe was withdrawn.
"He had another duty, however, a duty which was at times irksome, but one which on the whole was more pleasant than any that falls to men or spirits,—the duty indicated by the proverb that 'matches are made in the moon.'
"It was his lot to bind together the feet of all those on earth who are destined to a betrothal, and in the performance of this duty, he was often compelled to return to earth. ”

“ I never could use this ungainly tool aright: a top-heavy, clumsy, awkward thing, it rules you instead of you ruling it. The handle, too, is flat—almost with an edge itself sometimes—and is quite beyond the grasp of any but hands of iron. Now the American axe feels balanced like a sword ”

“ The shoemaker, blacksmith, or carpenter, smothered for three hundred and sixty-four days under his own waxed ends, cindery veneering, or plane modesties, has suddenly, on that prolific day, been so brought out on a prancing horse, or caught such a gleam from his well-scoured sword, resting on his trusty thigh, or left to play loose between his crooked legs, as to aspire to be road-master, town-reeve, supervisor of the county, assemblyman, representative in Congress, and even United States senator. ”

“ Then see that your axe is sharp—really sharp, not merely with a good edge on it. A slightly blunt axe is no more good for cutting down a tree than a very blunt knife is for cutting a pencil. You should know how to sharpen it on a grindstone, learn this now, while you are in civilisation, where grindstones can be found and there are men to show you. ”

“ The temper is put into steel when it's put into water; and the hotter the steel, and the quicker the chill, the harder it is. What made that axe so hard was, that I het it so hot, and chilled it quick. If I had made it only half as hot, and then put it in water, the temper wouldn't have begun but half as soon, and then it would have been only half as hard. I guess that axe's about an eighth too hard. ”

“ In the english history, when we look over the illustrious heads which have been engraven by Vertue and Howbraken, there is scarce any body, I imagine, who does not feel that the axe, the emblem of having been beheaded, which is engraved under some of the most illustrious of them. ”

“ I noticed that each face bore a look of unconcern and of defiance, each carefully hid a rusty dagger beneath its vestments, and on their shoulders they bore triumphantly a large chopping-block still dyed with dark stains of blood. And on this block leant a man with a drunken face and tottering legs, grotesquely supporting himself on the worn-out handle of an axe. ”

“ They know how to spare, when they see occasion; and when they strike, the axe may be sharp, indeed, but its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their custom ignominiously to kick the head which they have just struck off. ”

“ As I worked with my axe and hammer, I heard a light wagon come rattling up the road. Across the valley a man had begun to chop a tree. I could see the axe steel flash brilliantly in the sunshine before I heard the sound of the blow. ”

“ He blistered his hands, tired his back, and dulled the axe, but it did him good, and he got more comfort out of the ugly roots than any one dreamed, for with each blow he worked off some of the pent-up power that would otherwise have been expended in some less harmless way. ”

“ But, pray, could not one spend some weeks or years in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than these,— employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling? For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. ”

“ They could show how the long-sighted people were always cut to pieces in hand-to-hand struggles with axe and knife; until, with the invention of bows and arrows, the advantage veered to the long-sighted, and their enemies were shot down in droves. I could easily write a ruthless romance about it, and still more easily a ruthless anthropological theory. ”

“ Before the fellow could move he grabbed the handle of the axe with a grip of steel and at the same time dealt the man a crack on the chin which laid him for the moment helpless. While the giant was unconscious the irons were again fastened on his wrists, and while he was returning to consciousness a fire was kindled in a section of the wood removed from the scene of struggle, to which he was dragged and made as comfortable as possible on a blanket. ”

“ I shall be contented to work and go into the woods with my axe on my shoulder. If only I do not go home maimed, and if I am not compelled to hold out my hand at the roadside in order to live, like so many others. ”

“ If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. ”

“ If you guillotine a man—cut off his head, as they do in France, with an axe that falls like the monkey of a pile-driver—the limbs quiver and stretch, and move almost naturally for a good while afterwards. ”

“ He sharpens his axe, whetted its level edge on a rock of iron, on a mountain tipped with steel, on five Esthonian whetstones, on six whetstones, on the sides of seven hones, on eight surfaces; by night he grinds the axe, by day he fashions the haft. ”

“ The blacksmith, the tailor, the shoemaker, the labourers, had all in their several ways been working constructively all their life, one to make shoes and harrows, one to shape trousers and waistcoats, one to put together boots, others to build, and plant, and stack, and roof, and now, all at once, an appeal came to the suppressed barbarian in each, the chained madman in the asylum, and the destructive faculty was loose and rioting in its freedom. ”

“ An imaginative schoolboy left to himself must presently catch the resemblance between the pick-and-shovel men toiling at our aqueducts and the heroes of the axe and rifle extolled in his textbooks as the “sturdy pioneers.” Considered without prejudice, the chief difference between these two types is the difference between jean overalls and fringed buckskins. Contemporaneousness takes the romance out of everything; otherwise we might be rubbing elbows with heroes. ”

“ Now, to an Esquimaux a steel knife or axe is more valuable than a box full of sovereigns would be to us, and the honesty of the Esquimaux was as much tried by the sight of these articles as would be that of our London poor if a heap of sovereigns were left lying on the pavement. ”

“ My patron the Knight of Avenel used to compel the youth educated in his household to learn the use of axe and hammer, and working in wood and iron—he used to speak of old northern champions, who forged their own weapons, and of the Highland Captain, Donald nan Ord, or Donald of the Hammer, whom he himself knew, and who used to work at the anvil with a sledge-hammer in each hand. ”

“ For when weapons came into use, the habitual employment of the right hand to grasp the spear, sword, or knife made the nerves and muscles of the right side far more obedient to the control of the will than those of the left. The dexterity thus acquired by the right—see how the very word 'dexterity' implies this fact—made it more natural for the early hunter and artificer to employ the same hand preferentially in the manufacture of flint hatchets, bows and arrows, and in all the other manifold activities of savage life. ”

“ If we turn to consider the manners of the men, we find the same contrasts—on the one hand the maximum of gallantry and courtesy, and on the other a corresponding churlishness and brutality. Metaphorically and actually, the lance and the battle-axe were still rivalling each other in the warfare of daily life. ”

“ The picture of a fierce warrior, almost nude, painted up with these striking colors, and brandishing a knife, stone axe or war-club, and in later years armed with a flint-lock musket, was enough to terrify the beholder. ”

“ I have leather belts, printed rules, white steam, pistons, roar, air, water and fire and silence to express myself to my workmen in. I have long monotonous swings and sweeps of cold steel, buckets of melted iron, strips of wood, bells, whistles, clocks—to express myself, to express my human spirit to my men. ”

“ I already felt the cold steel, when this gentleman whom you see here charged them, shot the one who held me by the hair with a pistol, and cleft the skull of the other with his saber. He had assigned himself the task of saving the life of a man that day; chance caused that man to be myself. ”

“ But the main arm of the host was in the great shield, and the great axe wielded by men larger in stature and stronger of muscle than the majority of the Normans, whose physical race had deteriorated partly by inter-marriage with the more delicate Frank, partly by the haughty disdain of foot exercise. ”

“ And this, not because I am naturally brave—I am not—but because I have lived long enough to see that when, metaphorically speaking, the axe falls, some added strength is given to the spirit which, granted bodily health, can fight and go on fighting an apparently overwhelming foe. ”

“ But I have seen a good deal of fighting-life in my time, and a good deal of cowardice, and a fellow that can turn to bay, when the rope is round his neck—round his neck, did I say?—when the men below have hold of it, and are only waiting the gun to run him up aloft—I say that fellow is made for better things. I swear to you, Adair, that if you think I bear malice about this hole in my arm, you are out. ”