Say the old loggers:
Ever since he took his drunken course through the Wet Desert a stream has flowed down the crooked trail made by the blue ox. It is called Snake River in all the geographies. The great whale corral is known as Coos Bay. And Babe’s unfinished grave has become the islands and waters of Pugent Sound. The Cascade Mountains of Washington were made from the dirt thrown up by the loggers and Paul Bunyan when they began to dig the grave, and a bitter dispute still rages regarding the name for the loftiest peak. The loggers and the people of Seattle call it Mt. Bunyan, the people of Tacoma and the Indians call it Mt. Tacoma, and the geographers and tourists have named it Mt. Rainier, after the weather, which is rainier there than in any other part of the country.
So say the old loggers.
And loggers are truthful men.
NEW IOWA
Paul Bunyan, a historian first, an industrialist second, an inventor third, an orator fourth, was perhaps an artist in the fifth degree of his importance. Most authorities among the loggers of to-day insist that he was a great man of only four parts; they declare there was no art in him. The authorities of the classroom, less reverent and generous in their judgments, refuse to consider him as more than an industrialist; but the professors must be doubted a little, because they are certainly jealous of the great logger’s simple eloquence and his popularity with the plain people.
In the camps I have heard college loggers quote a teacher whom they called Professor Sherm Shermson as follows: “Fellows, there is no use talking. Paul Bunyan was a conscientious logger, I guess. Maybe he wrote big histories but, fellows, he didn’t write great histories. And his inventions were only useful in his logging operations; not one of them has become a universal boon to humanity. I expect he could make a right good speech; but, mark this point now, there is a difference between a right good speech and eloquence. Eloquence, fellows, must have morals and ideals in it to be eloquence. And as Paul Bunyan had French-Canadian blood, I must believe that his orations had more of Latin emotionalism in them than of Real American ideals and morals. I guess we’ll agree, fellows, that his Nordic foreman was a man of greater moral force and of purer mind.”
I do not know the rest of the professor’s argument, as the college loggers would listen to no doubts against the teachings of Professor Sherm Shermson. So I would always leave them when they went too far in their educated talk. Some might think that Professor Sherm Shermson was misquoted by his boys; but the first thing college loggers hear when they come to the woods is warnings about the dangers of telling falsehoods in the bunkhouses; so it is probable that the words which they attribute to Professor Sherm Shermson are typical of the teachings about Paul Bunyan in American universities.
But so long as trees are felled the race of loggers will hold to a staunch faith in Paul Bunyan as the supreme historian and maker of history, the most resourceful inventor, and the most powerful orator, as well as the most enterprising industrialist of all time. But they too question his art. He appreciated the folk songs and tales of his men, it is admitted, and he had his playhouses, wherein he painted and sculped about. His Paint Pots are still to be seen in the Yellowstone, and his wall painting in the Grand Canyon shows that he was clever with the brush. Most of his sculpture was left unfinished, but it is impressive, for all that. His beginnings for the busts of Johnny Inkslinger and the Big Swede, the unfinished works in the Yosemite which are called North Dome and Half Dome, plainly show that he was no crude chiseler. But, it is no wonder that loggers have little to say about their hero’s artistic creations, for these works had nothing to do with the logging industry, and he had no help from his men in making them. He only amused himself with art when he had no difficult labors to perform. Then, it is known that he opposed the teaching and practice of art among his loggers. He was particularly opposed to the writing of poetry by his men. He encouraged the making of simple songs and the telling of true tales by picked men, bunkhouse bards; but even these favored minstrels dared not attempt the making of grand, grave and lofty verse.
The earnest and reverent critic who studies Paul Bunyan will come to reason, however, that the master logger’s Camp Rule 31,721, which prohibited the writing of poetry, is no fair indication of his own feeling for noble rimes; it only proves that he thought his loggers no more fitted for the enjoyment of art than they were fitted for the understanding of history or the comprehension of scientific inventions. It is very probable that Paul Bunyan himself wrote tragic blank verse in his exuberant youth, and happy hunting songs in his elder years of discouragement. But he kept them to himself. He felt that all art was dangerous for his loggers; he knew that poetry was especially so. This he learned in his attempt to log off New Iowa. For there the loggers all turned poets and nearly ruined the logging industry.