Upon nearer inspection it was found that our neighbor had
commenced his plantation by the operation of girdling the tree, for
which favor he expected our thanks, observing pithily that "nothing
wouldn't never grow under sich a great mountain as that!" It is well
that "Goth" and "Vandal" are not actionable.
Yet the felling of a great tree has something of the sublime in it. When
the axe first falls on the trunk of a stately oak, laden with the green
wealth of a century, or a pine whose aspiring peak might look down on a
moderate church steeple, the contrast between the puny instrument and
the gigantic result to be accomplished approaches the ridiculous. But as
"the eagle towering in his pride of place was, by a mousing owl, hawked
at and killed," so the leaf-crowned monarch of the wood has no small
reason to quiver at the sight of a long-armed Yankee approaching his
deep-rooted trunk with an awkward axe. One blow seems to accomplish
nothing: not even a chip falls. But with another stroke comes a broad
slice of the bark, leaving an ominous, gaping wound. Another pair of
blows extends the gash, and when twenty such have fallen, behold a
girdled tree. This would suffice to kill, and a melancholy death it is;
but to fell is quite another thing.
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