etween the
professional and the part-time logger, the second is unwarranted in
bringing Noah into the picture, where he does not belong, while the others
all deal directly with the West. But certainly the Western tales make
better stories than do the Eastern ones.

PAUL BUNYAN'S TRICK

This story is one of the well-known Bunyan tales, told from Michigan to
the Coast, which shows some of the professional loggers' scorn for the
part-time logger.

Come all you stump ranch loggers and slick shod choker men
And learn how we gathered the round stuff up on the Skinney Ben.

You fellers call this logging, just sixty cars a day;
We kids beat that when I was young and thought that it was play.

My first real throw at logging was in Big Ole's camp
When he was racing Bunyan to be the skidding champ.

From sun till sun he drove us, till we were nearly dead,
And many times in getting up I've met myself going to bed.

He bought a load of lanterns and made us earn our keep;
The bed bugs even starved to death, we got so little sleep.

And talk about a driver! Two men must fall and buck
A quarter section every day or they were out of luck.

Now that was not so very hard as it looks from where you sit,
For there the trees grew close enough to chop one with each bit.

And every cussed feller used both ends of his swing,
And forests went like snow drifts before an early spring.

And talk about your skidding; although, perhaps they lied,
They said the trees were in the pond before the echo died.

But I've seen one yoke skidding for seven falling crews,
And Bunyan bought an iron mine to keep his stock in shoes.

We sure got out the round stuff, but still we were too slow,
And just a trick of Bunyan's had brought us all our woe.

'Twas long and crooked skid roads that made our logging late,
And Bunyan took his old Blue Ox and pulled his skid roads straight.

Now when you slick shod loggers call this here logging fast,
It sure makes us old timers just hanker for the past.

SOME LOGGER

This is one of the Eastern stories, but with numerous Western additions,
chief of which is the introduction of Noah.

In the pre-historic ages, e're the Swedes ruled Minnesota,
Fairest spot in all the Westland was the woodland of Dakota.

'Twas a land of timbered ridges long before the axe was known,
And there grew the largest timber on which the sun had ever shown.

Ma