h ink and
returned the list to Harvey. Harvey looked sourly at the ink marks, and
gave the boy another list to copy.

Bob found this task, which lasted until noon, fully as exhilarating as
the other. When he returned his copies he ventured an inquiry.

"What are these?" he asked.

"Descriptions," snapped Harvey.

In time he managed to reason out the fact that they were descriptions of
land; that each item of the many hundreds meant a separate tract. Thus
the first line of his first copy, translated, would have read as
follows:

"The southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of section number four,
township number six, north, range number twenty-six, west."

--And that it represented forty acres of timber land. The stupendous
nature of such holdings made him gasp, and he gasped again when he
realized that each of his mistakes meant the misplacement on the map of
enough for a good-sized farm. Nevertheless, as day succeeded day, and
the lists had no end, the mistakes became more difficult to avoid. The
S, W, E, and N keys on the typewriter bothered him, hypnotized him,
forced him to strike fantastic combinations of their own. Once Harvey
entered to point out to him an impossible N.S.

Over his lists Harvey, the second bookkeeper, and Fox held long
consultations. Then Bob leaned back in his office chair to examine for
the hundredth time the framed photographs of logging crews, winter
scenes in the forest, record loads of logs; and to speculate again on
the maps, deer heads, and hunting trophies. At first they had appealed
to his imagination. Now they had become too familiar. Out the window
were the palls of smoke, gigantic buildings, crevasse-like streets, and
swirling winds of Chicago.

Occasionally men would drift in, inquiring for the heads of the firm.
Then Fox would hang one leg over the arm of his swinging chair, light a
cigar, and enter into desultory conversation. To Bob a great deal of
time seemed thus to be wasted. He did not know that big deals were
decided in apparently casual references to business.

Other lists varied the monotony. After he had finished the tax lists he
had to copy over every description a second time, with additional
statistics opposite each, like this:

S.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4, T. 4 N.R., 17, W. Sec. 32,
W.P. 68, N. 16, H. 5.

The last characters translated into: "White pine, 68,000 feet; Norway
pine, 16,000 feet; hemlock, 5,000 feet," and that inventoried the
standi