If this small pest obtains lodgment in a barn, or in the oak finish or furniture of a house, it is likely to do a vexatious amount of damage, and no practicable method of checking its ravages has been found. Varnishes do not exclude it. Boiling will kill the borer, but furniture and wainscotings are not easily boiled.
From the frames of old buildings, when of oak, powder-post will sometimes run in streams when a beam or brace is struck.
But everything has its virtues, if only they can be found out; and long ago, in New England, some rustic AEsculapius discovered that powder-post was a sovereign balm for all flesh-wounds, causing them to heal rapidly, without "proud flesh." And if proud flesh appeared, the wound would still heal if it were opened and dressed with powder-post.
What modern medical science would predicate concerning this panacea, I know not, but thousands of cuts in rural districts treated with powder-post did very well, and faith in it waxed strong. So when Sam Eastman cut his foot over in the "east woods," all the wiseacres in the neighborhood declared that that foot must be done up in powder-post. "If it isn't," they said, "proud flesh will get into it, and that boy will be lame all winter."
It was a bad cut. Sam and Willis Murch had been splitting four-foot logs, when Sam's axe, glancing from a log, had buried the blade in his instep; the very bones were cut. There were four of us boys at work together. We ran to him, tied a handkerchief round his ankle, and twisted it tight with a stick; but blood flowed profusely. We did not know how to apply a tourniquet.
When at last we had helped Sam home, night was at hand; and although we went to all the neighbors, we could not collect enough powder-post to dress the cut. Several people said, however, that plenty of it could be obtained at the old Plancher barn, for the braces of that barn had been made of cleft red oak, and were "all powder-posted." But the Plancher barn was four miles distant, in the clearing in the "great woods." A settler bearing the name had cleared a farm there forty years before, and had lived there for over twenty years. Ill fortune beset him, however. His children died, his house burned on a winter night, and he moved away in discouragement, abandoning the property.
The clearing was known to all the boys of the locality as a favorite haunt of foxes.
The next morning Sam's younger brother, John, Willis Murch and I went up to the old barn to get powder-post. John had a small axe with which to split the timbers, four old newspapers in which to gather up the precious dust, and a bottle in which to put it.
It was Thanksgiving morning. The sun rose in a clear, straw-colored sky. It was cold; the ground was frozen, and there was skating on the small ponds.
Red squirrels were scolding on the borders of the wood-lots, and blue jays came squalling into the orchards.