Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1858-03-05
RURAL MEMORIES.

Did. you ever stand up to your knees in
snow and cut down great tree? And did
You think you were marring. shaft which
the wit of Wren or Walter could never
rebuild. That you were cutting down a
greater than Gibbon, that had been making
history these hundred years.
Well, stroke followed stroke. The ecli-
oes startle dry twig or withered leaf here
and there, and down they rattle and sink in
10 the white grave they were not born to-
Pretty soon, the giant frame sways a,itiie,
und red squirrel takes flying leap into a
neighboring tree, deserving house and home,
and what great store of winter treasure
Then there is cracking as of kindied
fire. The rugged grains give way. The
branch es that have defed hundred temp
ests, ,Yibrate like pendulum beat or two,
and then slowly, solemnly sweep down thro'
the frosty air, and crash along the untrodden
snow.
There is break in tie mighty ranks-a
magnificent ruin under foot. The air clos
es silently into the mould the tree had made,
as ii God had never reared there pillar OF
his sfirst temples"
There were nests 10 that tree, and when
Spring leaves her breath on the gale, the
birds shall come again, vainly seeking their
old homesteads. You trlumphantIy leap
upon the fallen monarch; you cut a length
and il il dinner time. You make a cushion
of the dry leaves, and from the root OF a
hollow tree draw forth an old tin pail with a
young tin pail inverted upon the top of it.
For .service," large, clean chip is ready
: to your hand. You draw forth from the
white napkin, the white bread and the
smooth white pork. Your pocket knife an
s.yers for a carver, and fingers were made
before forks, and isn't it princely banquet!
You masticate and muse. That tree is to
be turned into q homei that home is to be
yours, but as you think it ''ours,'' and there
is something about that sours'' that gives
you understandable sensation OF warmth--as
much as when, at night, with wife on one
side and brain on the other, you bask in the
little summer of your own hearth-light.
Bot the voices of the coming tearnstefs
disturb your revery, and "whoa haw!" an
swers back the distant hill, and "gee!' goes
laundering through the ravine. The crack
of the long whip becomes perfect tae dt
ioie. Every little hill has whip of its own
The grave, respectable old woods are in &
frolic. On through the snow, come the pa
tient pairs of the yoke; Archimedes is call
ed into requisition, and the log-that's the
name of the dead tree-is hcaved on the
sled, and drags its slow length along towar'
the saw mill, whose short asthmatic
burk comes to your ears from the distan
ssrun.'
The old Saw Mill! DO you remember
when you rode backward and forward, OF
the "carriage,'' with the hapless log? How
YOU grew braver, and rode out-out, till yo'
sat over the deep abyss of waters, beyon'
i the gable ends of the mill! Have you eve
seen anything except the grave, SO deei
and dark since then! And what treasure:
YOU made of the sawdust-what mysterle
there were in the gate-wliat terror in tn
foom- what an immense forest came u
boldly round the hill! You have since
learned that there were two acres in it, NOR
or less. The sawyer is dead-,he mill i
dismantled--the stream has run dry
the wood is fallow, and the fallow
grave
But there's another tsiength to cut,'' an
eirded anew you mount the choppers rostrur
softly singing 10 yourself in pauses. a bar
.sWoodman spare that tree;" that put n
bar, however, to the destruction going on
round. and by-and-by you have clearing
corn goes through the sword exercise an
salutes the morning with its green blade
and pumpkin vines, Ike children ''jus
let loose from SCHOOL, run all over tn
field.
Other harvests and new harvesters com
and you and your reveries are alike to
gotten.--B. F. TAYLOR.