On Sawing Wood

‘To say nothing and saw wood,’ seems to me one of the most sagacious phrases passed down by our hard working forebears. Like most sayings which have emanated from manual labor, this is blunt, homely, and, to the loquaciously inclined, painfully accurate. Show me a man bent jack-knife-fashion over a saw-horse, with a short log under his buck, and I will point out a man who is minding his own business with admirable zeal. If he must speak, he stops sawing. While he saws he is necessarily mute. Hence this shrewd phrase, which is, punning aside, a perfect saw.

But though such excellent concentration on one’s business is a good thing, it is by no means all that may be said in praise of sawing wood. The hygienic experts tell us that the rhythmic motion is a nearly ideal exercise for the muscles of the body. Well, that is good, too; but I am afraid that even that is not its best recommendation. Walking is a fine exercise, but walking has come to be almost the woe of persons without car-fare. Lying flat on one’s stomach, and raising one’s self by the hands and toes is an admirable treatment for superfluous weight; but it is very like a punishment, as any one who practices it seriously will admit in confidence. No; to say that any exercise is beneficial is not likely to procure for it many stout adherents. It will not do to advertise that side of sawing wood alone.

To say truth, I am not quite able to give an exact reason for the fascination exerted over a normal man who approaches his saw-horse in the right spirit. It may be the sharp response of the iron teeth, as they bite into the wood. Or it may be the feeling of power and victory, conveyed by the final surrender of the log, when one end, beheaded in the unequal struggle, falls with a satisfying thud. Or it may be the ancient sense of husbandry, of storing away fuel for the winter days, that returns with what is, naturally, one of the most primitive kinds of work. These are random guesses. No doubt, if William Hazlitt had possessed a saw-horse and a couple of cords of four-foot wood, he would have said these things better long ago, and given reasons besides.

There are pleasing odors, and quite indescribable, from the many varieties of new-sawn wood. They are not for the flat-dweller. The practiced nose of the sawyer can distinguish beech from birch, and oak from maple; and when he comes upon a stick of wild cherry, which, of all our hard woods is most fragrant, he will be aware of its presence at the first slide of the saw, even though he be blind-fold.

Again, each kind of wood has an individuality, some peculiarity which brings an agreeable sense of variety to the sawyer. The tough oak-butt gives battle worthy of any man’s arms. Maple, too, especially the rock maple so plentiful on New England hills, falls no willing victim to the steel. Beech is not so stubborn when not too dry; and as for birch, — birch is a prodigy. It grows quickly, and with its chaste and beautiful bark I am afraid it poses a good deal among its less attractive brethren of the forests. It is the lazy man’s delight on the saw buck. I am speaking of the white, or silver birch. The yellow variety develops great surprises; and is notably knotty and deformed in figure.

I have said that the birch log is the lazy man’s delight. This, of course, is my private confession. I know that as I survey my own pile of cord-wood, of some pretension, I take almost unconscious note of the white sticks therein, and view askance some of the darker hues of bark; for I know their mettle. I have set myself a stint. This does not mean that I am methodical by nature: on the contrary, I am quite out of harmony with preciseness; but the stint seemed the only way by which I could be certain of reducing those logs to stove-dimensions.

Stint is a good word, as a noun. As a verb it means something not quite so pleasing. Do not confound it with stunt, however. A stunt is something quite useless. It is the horse-play of the mountebank, and has nothing in common with honest, productive labor. A stint is the warning to the wise that something demands to be accomplished ; a goad to the laggard that time is on the wing. — Well, my stint is twenty sticks every morning. Twenty four-foot logs, selected with the unbiased, hopeful eye that every sawyer possesses before he begins his work; and whether these are finished before breakfast, or after breakfast, is of little consequence. For myself, I find that ante-breakfast labor is deadly. I have heard of persons who walk a certain number of miles before breakfast. To get an appetite, I suppose. It seems to me no less than a slur on good food. But this is a matter that may be left in abeyance. Our theme is the stint, and the doing of the stint.

The saw should be sharp. He works long who works with dull tools. If this is not already a proverb, it should be. Then the saw should be ‘set ’ properly. For a long time I labored vainly because of my ignorance of this point. The saw was sharp, yet it did not seem to be doing its work. It was a neighbor who looked at the blade with the eye of a connoisseur, and announced the difficulty. The set of a saw, and the hang of a scythe, are two bits of knowledge that must be learned afield. They are not in books.

Well, then, the saw is admirable, and the horse, or buck, not too high or too low, and the log is ready. Perhaps it is just as well if it is a sapling, to begin with, or a stick which the woodsman has split with a wedge. Pyrrhic victories are not uncommon in sawing wood. To triumph over a stout stump of oak is not so much of a triumph, if the victor sits breathless on the chopping-block for a half hour, viewing the remains, and getting back his breath. And let the attack be not too brilliant, I pray. Let not the sawdust fly too briskly, for after the first stick is sawed there are nineteen more to come, if twenty be your stint, as mine.

The best woodsman I ever saw was a French Canadian, who chopped so moderately that it seemed impossible that he would ever earn his salt. But every blow counted; and he could take out a bigger chip than any man around. So let it be with your sawing. Begin good-naturedly, and calmly, as though there were time enough for all things. Do not try to hurry the saw or bear on too hard. The saw knows best what company it is in, and ‘ driving’ will not help.

When the last stick is finished, examine the ends carefully. This one was done in a workmanlike manner, you will see. That one is ragged, hesitating; if not a botch, yet not all that can be desired. On this there are marks of a false start; you were uncertain, wavering. This shows the place where you stopped, to wonder perhaps if after all you would n’t better hire in a man to do the job. Unworthy idea! The saw rebelled at that shirking spirit, and went awry for a dozen strokes. You can count your failures and your successes as plainly as if they were written in Arabic numbers, on the end of your sticks. They are the witnesses of your worth as a sawyer of wood.

It is when I have finished my morning stint of sawing wood that I am bland, approachable, and full of benevolence toward the world and my fellow men. Have I not just cause to be satisfied with myself? I have sawed my wood. It may rain this afternoon; to-morrow it may snow. I have done my stint. I am proud of that dull acclaim in the muscles of my back, for did not I come by it honestly, and have I not tangible results to show?

Then, of course, there is wood to be split. I confess that splitting wood has something of brilliance, of vivacity, that sawing lacks. Hence, I conclude, by the good old Puritan reasoning, that sawing is better for my soul. There is something too exultant in sending the axe straight down the grain of a sawed stick; something too victorious for mere man to experience often without strutting. The frugal, steady homesteader is a sawyer; the hired man, fond of display and vagrant by nature, is your natural splitter. He takes no delight in the less spectacular exercise, for it is not his wood.

Not long ago, as I was singing the praises of sawing wood, perhaps a little injudiciously, in the presence of a neighbor of mine, he said sharply, —

‘Don’t rhapsodize to me about that beastly saw-horse; I had to saw wood when I was a boy until my back was nearly broken, and I almost ran away from home.’

I am sorry for that man; and it is no Pecksniffian sorrow, either. It is good to saw wood; but it is not good to saw too much wood, or to saw a single stick under duress. I would not exchange a single minute of the satisfaction of my stint — no, not for the hours spent by kings; but if I were ordered out to my woodpile, to labor there as a sordid matter of dollars and cents, or at somebody’s desire, I think I should be inclined to break the saw and run away. In short, I have no desire to saw your wood.