ssion.
He wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and
cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying his
dinner to his work a couple of miles past my house--for he chopped all
summer--in a tin pail; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in
a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his belt; and sometimes he
offered me a drink. He came along early, crossing my bean-field, though
without anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit.
He wasn't a-going to hurt himself. He didn't care if he only earned his
board. Frequently he would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his
dog had caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to
dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, after
deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the
pond safely till nightfall--loving to dwell long upon these themes. He
would say, as he went by in the morning, "How thick the pigeons are! If
working every day were not my trade, I could get all the meat I should
want by hunting-pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges--by gosh! I
could get all I should want for a week in one day."

He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and ornaments
in his art. He cut his trees level and close to the ground, that the
sprouts which came up afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might
slide over the stumps; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support
his corded wood, he would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter
which you could break off with your hand at last.

He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy
withal; a well of good humor and contentment which overflowed at his
eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work
in the woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of
inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Canadian French, though
he spoke English as well. When I approached him he would suspend his
work, and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which
he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball
and chew it while he laughed and talked. Such an exuberance of animal
spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground
with laughter at anything which made him think and tickled him. Looking
round upon the trees he would exclaim--"By George! I can enjoy myself
well enough here chopping;