OCR Text |
Show 1 Those "Days of Real Sport" Ono effect of the anthmcile strike in the East has been the revival in certain rural sections of a quaint old custom of our lathers and grandfathers, that of using wood for fuel. A news dispatch from Ithaca, N. Y., tells that many farmers are not only retting out enough wood to keep . : themselves warm but while they are at it they are also : cutting a few cords to sell in town, where it brings frbm $15 to $20 a cord. They find it profitable to draw some I wood into town when they are going there for supplies. I In the good old days of real sport, it was the duty of the ' j boys of the family to saw, split and pile its wood; tid occasionally the voice of the bucksaw was heard in the land I at most unseasonable hours. If peradventure the boy whose i 'duty it was to replenish the daily supply forgot so to do; ' immediately after school, father compelled him to sally forth ' ! in the night with a lantern and an injunction to perform' the alloted task before going to bed. The sawing generally I was easier than the splitting. Many a boy could say noth-i noth-i ing and saw wood, but when it came to wielding the axe on! a "hard knot' he made frequent and impassioned remarks , 1 which would have thrown his Sunday school teacher into I I paroxysms of horror rather than transports of delight. A j 1 "cord" in those days consisted of a pile eight feet long, four i ' feet wide and four feet high, and its reduction into sticks ' ! of a size comportable with the requirements of the kitchen " stove was a matter that invariably exhausted the boy's energy, to say othing of his vocabulary. Except in political circles, wood sawing is now as much I out of date as log rolling, and no effort to repopularize it is likely to succeed. Dire emergencies ensuing from a coal strike may effect something in the nature of a resurrecX tion for a few days, but to all intents and purposes the bucksaw buck-saw and the sawbuck artTrelies of an antiquity contemporan-' contemporan-' eons with the stage, coach and the bootjack. When fond recollection presented to the view of the late Samuel Wood-worth Wood-worth the old oaken bucket that hung in the well and the, various scenes of his childhood so dear to his heart, it is ' quite possible that there obtruded itself upon the reminis- cent panorama a picture of himself toiling at the old, stub-1 stub-1 born woodpile that stood in the yard. But he didn't mention it. There are scenes of one's childhood that still evoke less poetry than profanity. Anaconda Standard. |