Jack’s little problem set his mother thinking how often we do what is right, at some cost to ourselves, perhaps, but do it in such an awkward, proud way, that we give pain to others and so undo the value of our honest effort to be good; and how, in the matter of feasts, it is much easier in our time for a guest to decline anything that does not suit him in the way of eating and drinking than it used to be long ago, when a gentleman was thought not to have “dined” unless he had both eaten and drunk more than was good for him; and how, in the matter of rules, it is only little silly boys who are ashamed to confess that they are not their own masters. The bravest and wisest men have been keepers of simple rules in simple matters, and in greater ones respecters of a loving Intelligence above their own, whose laws they were proud to obey.
The courage that displays itself in excesses is happily no longer the fashion; rather the courage that keeps modestly within bounds, and can say “no” without offense to others.
NOVEMBER IN THE CAÑON
The long season of fair autumn weather was drawing to a close. Everybody was tired of sunshine; there had been nearly six months of it, and the face of nature in southern Idaho was gray with dust. A dark morning or a cloudy sunset was welcome, even to the children, who were glad of the prospect of any new kind of weather.
But no rain came. The river had sunk so low in its bed it barely murmured on the rocks, like a sleeper disturbed in his dream. When the children were indoors, with windows shut and fire crackling, they could hear no sound of water; and this cessation of a voice inseparable from the life of the cañon added to the effect of waiting which belonged to these still fall days.
The talk of the men was of matters suited to the season. It was said the Chinamen’s wood-drive had got lodged in Moore’s Creek on its way to the river, there being so little water in the creek this year, and might not get down at all, which would be almost a total loss to the Chinamen. Charley Moy knew the boss Chinaman of the “drive,” and said that he had had bad luck now two seasons running.
The river was the common carrier between the lumber-camps in the mountains and the consumers of wood in the towns and ranches below. Purchasers who lived on the river-bank were accustomed to stop their winter’s supply of firewood as it floated by. It was taken account of and paid for when the owners of the drive came to look up their property.
Every year three drives came down the river. Goodwin’s log-drive came first, at high water, early in the summer. The logs were from twelve to twenty feet long. Each one was marked with the letters M H. These were the first two of Mr. Goodwin’s initials, and were easily cut with an axe; the final initial, G, being difficult to cut in this rude way, was omitted; but everybody knew that saw-logs marked M H belonged to Goodwin’s drive. They looked like torpedo-boats as they came nosing along with an ugly rolling motion through the heavy current.
The men who followed this first drive were rather a picked lot for strength and endurance, but they made slow progress past the bend in the cañon. Here a swift current and an eddy together combined to create what is called a jam. The loggers were often seen up to their waists in water for hours, breaking up the jam and working the logs out into the current. When the last one was off the men would get into their boat—a black, flat-bottomed boat, high at stem and stern like a whaleboat—and go whooping down in mid-current like a mob of schoolboys upon some dangerous sort of lark. These brief voyages between the jams must have been the most exciting and agreeable part of log-driving.
After Goodwin’s drive came the Frenchmen’s cord-wood drive; and last of all, when the river was lowest, came the Chinamen’s drive, making the best of what water was left.