The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-06-02
SELECTED STORY.
The Tale of q Log.
by w. II. II. MURRAY.

BY w. II. II, MURRAY.
After years of absence-shall l say
say exile?-I had come back TO the old
home, and lighted the fire in the huge
fireplace, and through the long winter
evenings and we'll into the nights of
cold starlight and colder storm had
piled it high with logs full of sap and
gums, that make heat and flame, and
enjoyed the crackle and roar Of it with
the zest of boy and the reflective
mood of a man ripened by years and
thought to sense and appreciate the
genuine comfort of real and homely
conditions. And the old fire place had
told me many things-tales of the old
time folk that were before me, and of
whose blood / am, memorial tales of
their loves and hates, joys and griefs,
life and death; of their tears and laugh
ter, their wit and humor, their merry
making and frolics, their jokes and fun
all of which it had seen and heard,
helped and shared. And / had written
them all down as things pleasant and
precious to me and mine, and the writ
ten pages, filled with old-time folk lore,
lay on the table by my side, record
and memorial of those that had been
and were not, whom had never seen,
and vet knew well, for out of them all
had / not come, and were they not all,
wise and foolish, weak andstrong, wick
ed and good, living again in mep
1t was night cold with GOODNESS
which seldom comes to us of the Con-
necticut coast, GOODNESS that pierced
through wood and penetrated stone as a
aIra6 Enifa onfara thu Hpah
when murder drives it through fibre
and bone. The covering of the old
house cracked, and the pond roared
and Numbered as the horrible cold
pried great seams and assures through
the thick blue ice that burdened its
level water. 1t was glacial night, and
he who opened door thrust his face into
the center of glacier.
There was log in the shed close by
the door of the room in which l sat
the trunk of an old time apple tree,
ringed with twice a hundred years of
growth, solid as ebony and heavy as
stone. Even as boy remember it as
a mighty trunk, seasoned on its own
root, sapless as monument, barkless and
shiny as pillar of bone. The hardest
woods of the world have l cut, but
never harder. A six-pound axe, tenn
pered TO perfection and swung with the
full length and strength of me, started
so small chip that l marveled, and as
l looked at the edge of the axe and
then l looked at the laughingly small
proof of the blow l said: Am l my
self, or has some little fellow who
never swung head of heft and edge of
steel got inside my jacket this morn
ing?"
This mighty log 1 ended up, and
strained at the task with all my strength
and edged it through the door, and
rolled it on the hearthstone, and pried
it up with a sturdy sapling of hill
growth-my huge hickory pocker-
one end at time upon the strong irons.
The old fireplace opened its mouth wide
and roared its welcome as it felt its
weight, and the seasoned wood at the
touch of living brands burst into
mighty sheet of pure, sparkless yellow
flame.
"The old fireplace has been telling
you tales, hear" said the log; tales of
the ancient folk and years long gone.
And it is fit he should, for men fall fast
and women fade like flowers, and the
young in the whirl of happy life hear
little or forget. But the living should
remember that the dead lived once, and
live still, and hate to be forgotten. For
to the loving heart and the large mind
oblivion is bitter as wOrmwood to the
mouth of babe, who screams at the
taste, while the hope of remembrance
is sweet as fruit to child or flower to
bee.
But l can tell you tales of the old
folk, too, and of those older than they
for saw the white come in and the
red 60 out, and Of myself will tell you
first, for only 80 will you learn of them
and their ways. So listen while tell
you the Tale of Tree"
81 sprang from seed that was
grown over sea, and little girl, fair
even as yours, whom you love as blood
loveth blood like itself, only purer and
stronger, brought it hither. A big
Kentish farmer stood on the wharf
holding tightly to her fathers strong
hand, saying: Take this little seed and
plant it on your fathers farm nigh the
house he will build, that the new Eng
land might remember the DID, He was
huge, strong man, with gray eyes and
big, shaggy eyebrows, and vast yell
low beard, and as he placed the seed
that was mother to me in the little
girls hand he lifted her up in his
mighty arms and kissed her red cheeks
with tears in his eyes. Grace Norton
was her name, and she it was that, first
of all maidens, was married in Guilford
town, whittier her father, Thomas Nor
ton, came, and whose warm, brown
marshes with the strong, healthy salt
smell at the roots of their growth run
down in the amber and gold to the
beaches and the sea.
"One warm spring morning, wher
the wonder of growing leaves and o.
soft, green colors was on the grea
woods Grace Norton took me forth il