sand heap stretched away gleaming
in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I
heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence
another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the
winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the
life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe
had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with
a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to
swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on
the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed
there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not
yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a
like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition;
but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing
them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.
I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with
portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun
to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in
the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose
groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit
of the fog.
So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs
and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or
scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself,—
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,—
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.
I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two
sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the
rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much
stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned
by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in
the woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of
bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at
noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my
bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered
with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend
than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them,
having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the
wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly
over the chips which I had made.
By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made
the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. I had
already bought the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on
the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins’ shanty was
considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it he was not
at home. I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within,
the window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with a
peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being
raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was
the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the
sun. Door-sill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens
under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it
from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark,
and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only
here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She
lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and
also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to
step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own
words, they were “good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a
good window,”—of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed
out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an
infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed
looking-glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling,
all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the
meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents
to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody
else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to
be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust
claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the
only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the road. One
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