park arrester's a good thing all
right, so you put it in. And then there's maybe a chance to use a little
paint and make the shanties look like something besides shanties; that
don't cost much, either, to a half-million-dollar business. And so on
through a thousand things. And by and by it's costing twenty dollars and
one cent to get your lumber to market; and it's B-U-S-T, bust!"

"That's economic waste," put in Merker.

"Or lack of experience," added Bob.

"No," said Welton, emphasizing his point with his pipe; _"it's not
sticking to business!_ It's not stripping her down to the bare
necessities! It's going in for frills! When you get to be as old as I
am, you learn not to monkey with the band wagon."

His round, red face relaxed into one of his good-humoured grins, and he
relit his pipe.

"That's the trouble with this forestry monkey business. It's all right
to fool with, if you want fooling. So's fancy farming. But it don't pay.
If you are playing, why, it's all right to experiment. If you ain't,
why, it's a good plan to stick to the methods of lumbering. The present
system of doing things has been worked out pretty thorough by a lot of
pretty shrewd business men. And it _works!"_

Bob laughed.

"Didn't know you could orate to that extent," he gibed. "Sic'em!"

Welton grinned a trifle abashed. "You don't want to get me started,
then," said he.

"Oh, but I do!" Bob objected, for the second time that day.

"Now this slashing business," went on the old lumberman in a more
moderate tone. "When the millennium comes, it would be a fine thing to
clear up the old slashings." He turned suddenly to Bob. "How long do you
think it would take you with a crew of a dozen men to cut and pile the
waste stuff in 18?" he inquired.

Bob cast back the eye of his recollection to the hopeless tangle that
cumbered the ground.

"Oh, Lord!" he ejaculated; "don't ask me!"

"If you were running a business would you feel like stopping work and
sending your men--whom you are feeding and paying--back there to pile up
that old truck?"

Bob's mind, trained to the eager hurry of the logging season, recoiled
from this idea in dismay.

"I should say not!" he cried. Then as a second thought he added: "But
what they want is to pile the tops while the work is going on."

"It takes just so much time to do so much work," stated Welton
succinctly, "and it don't matter whether you do it all at once, or try
to fool yourself by spraddling