“I can arrange that. I’ll tell him in the morning that I want James to learn to handle an axe; that he undertook at Hanscom’s tavern to cut some wood and stuck the whole bitt of the axe in his leg the second clip, and ask him if he won’t grind an axe for him and take him to the wood-pile with him, and teach him, and see that he does not cut himself.”
The old gentleman was well pleased with the idea of teaching James an art in which he was so competent to instruct, not in the least suspecting that it was thought he could not supply the fire without doing more than he was able.
No sooner was breakfast despatched than, having ground an axe, he proceeded with James to the wood-pile.
The old gentleman set his chopping-block on end near a pile of oak and maple limbs cut eight feet in length, and said to his pupil,—
“Now, Jeames (he held on to the old pronunciation) I’ll hold these sticks on the block and I want you to strike just there,” pointing with his finger, “where they bear on the log, because if you don’t, you’ll jar my hands.”
Not, however, reposing much confidence in his assistant, he had taken the precaution to put on a very thick patched mitten to deaden the jar.
James began to strike, the blows were forcible but most of them misspent. Whenever he struck fair on a stick he cut it off as though it had been a rush. But many times he struck over, and as many more fell short, so that only the corner of the axe hit the stick, and sometimes missed it altogether and drove the axe into the block with such force that it was hard work to pull it out.
It was by no means the old chopper’s purpose to find fault, he praised the vigor with which James struck and protected his own fingers from the jar of the random blows as well as he could. In the course of an hour James improved very sensibly; perceiving this, Mr. Whitman began to point out some of his errors and said: “You must look at the place where you mean to hit and not at your axe, and you must let your left hand slip up and down on the axe-handle and guide your axe a good deal with your right hand, whereas you keep a fast grip with both hands on the axe-handle, just as a woman does when she undertakes to cut wood.”
James blushed and replied,—
“If I should do that way I don’t think I could strike as fair as I do now.”