The Redemption of David Corson

by Charles Frederic Goss

He wisely calculated that the accomplishment of this arduous task would occupy his mind and strength through the year of expiation which he had condemned himself to pass.

It is one of the most impressive spectacles of human life to see a man enter a primeval forest and set himself to subdue nature with no implement but an axe! Those of us who require so many luxuries and who know how to maintain existence only by the use of so many curious and powerful pieces of mechanism would think ourselves helpless indeed in the center of a wilderness with nothing but an axe or a rifle!

No such apprehensions troubled the heart of the young woodsman, for from his earliest childhood he had handled that primitive implement and knew its exhaustless possibilities. He was young and strong, for reckless as his recent life had been, the real sources of his physical vitality had not been depleted.

When David had passed out of sight of the house and entered the precincts of the quiet forest, there surged up from his heart those mighty impulses and irresistible tides of energy which are the sublime inheritance of youth. He counted off the months and they seemed to him like days. Already he heard the monarchs of the forest fall beneath his blows, already he saw the walls of his log cabin rising in an opening of the vast wilderness, already he beheld Pepeeta standing in the open door. The vast panorama of this virgin world began to unroll itself to his delighted vision. The splendid spectacle of a morning as new and wonderful as if there had never been another, drew his thoughts away from himself and his cares. The dew was sparkling on the grass; the meadow larks were singing from every quarter of the fields through which he was passing; the great limbs of the trees were tossed by the fresh breezes of June. Everywhere were color, music, fragrance, motion. The burden rolled from his heart; remorse and guilt faded like dreams; the sad past lost its hold; the present and the future were radiant! To even the worst of men, in such surroundings, there come moments of exemption from the ennui and shame of life, and to this deep soul which had issued, purified, from the fires through which it had passed, they lengthened into glorious hours, hours such as kindled on the lips of the poet those exultant and exquisite words:

"The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
"The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his heaven—
All's right with the world!"

He climbed a steep hillside, descended into a secluded and beautiful valley, pressed his way through dense underbrush, and while the day was still young stood on the spot where he had determined to lay the foundation of his cabin.

Two ranges of hills came together and enclosed it as if in giant arms. Two pure crystal springs issued from clefts in the bases of these hills, and after flowing towards each other for perhaps a quarter of a mile, mingled their waters in a brawling brook. It was at the point of their junction that David had determined to erect that primitive structure which has afforded a home to so many families in our American wildernesses. He threw his bundle down and gazed with admiration on the scene.

Here was the virgin and unprofaned loveliness of Nature. He felt her charm and prostrated himself before her shrine. But he rendered to that invisible spirit of which these forms were only an imperfect manifestation, a worship deeper still, and by an instinct of pure adoration lifted his face toward the sky.

Having refreshed his soul by this communion, he drank a deep draught of the sparkling water at the point where the rivulets met. Then he threw off his coat, took his axe in hand and selected a tree on which to begin his attack.

It was an enormous oak which, with roots struck deep into the soil and branches lifted high and spread wide in the air, had maintained itself successfully against innumerable foes for perhaps a thousand years. He reflected long before he struck, for to him as to all lovers of nature there is a certain inviolable sacredness about a tree.