David was a lover of trees.  From the summits of the hills he had often gazed down upon the forests and observed how “all the tree tops lay asleep like green waves on the sea.”  He had harvested the fruits of the apple and peach, clubbed the branches of the walnut, butternut and beach, and boiled the sap of the maple.  He had seen the trees offer their hospitable shelter to the birds and the squirrels, had basked beneath their umbrageous shadows and had listened to their whispers in the summer, and to their wild music “when winter, that grand old harper, smote his thunder-harp of pines.”

It cost him pain to lay violent hands on a thing so sacred; nevertheless he swung his axe in the air and a loud reverberating blow broke the immense solitude.  There are many kinds of music; but there is none fuller of life and power and primal energy than the ring of the woodsman’s axe as blow after blow, through hour after hour, falls rhythmically upon the wound which he cuts in the great hole of a forest monarch.

The gash deepened and widened, the chips flew in showers and the woodchopper’s craft, long unpracticed, came back to him with every stroke.  The satisfying consciousness of skill and power filled him with a sort of ecstasy.  Just as the sun reached the zenith and looked down to see what devastation was being wrought in this solitude, the giant trembled; the blade had struck a vital place; he reeled, leaned forward, lurched, plunged headlong, and with a roar that resounded through the wide reaches of the forest, fell prone upon the ground.

The woodsman wiped the perspiration from his brow and smiled.  The appetite of the pioneer had been whetted with his work.  He kindled a fire, boiled a pot of coffee, fried a half dozen slices of bacon, remembered his sickly appetite in the luxurious restaurants of great cities, and laughed aloud for joy—­wild, unbounded joy—­the joy of primitive manhood, of health, of strength, of hope.  And then he stretched himself on the ground and looked up into the blue sky through the opening he had made in the green canopy above him and through which the sun was gazing with bold, free glances on the face of the modest valley and whispering amorously of its love.

Those glances fell soft and warm on his own upturned countenance, and the rays of life-giving power penetrated the inmost core of his being, finding their way by some mysterious alchemy through the medium of matter into the very citadel of the spirit itself.  They imparted a new life.  He basked in them until he fell asleep, and when he awakened he felt anew the joy of mere physical existence; he rose, shook himself like a giant, and resumed his work.