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158
Adventures in Contentment
·
David Grayson
42
His
interest
in
everything
is
prodigious.
When
he
saw
what
I
was
doing
he
launched
at
once
upon
an
account
of
the
methods
of
axe-helving,
ancient
and
modern,
with
true
incidents
of
his
childhood.
"Man,"
he
exclaimed,
"you've
clean
forgotten
one
of
the
preenciple
refinements
of
the
art.
When
you
chop,
which
hand
do
you
hold
down?"
At
the
moment,
I
couldn't
have
told
"to
save
my
life,
so
we
both
got
up
on
our
feet
and
tried.
"It's
the
right
hand
down,"
I
decided;
"that's
natural
to
me."
"You're
a
normal
right-handed
chopper,
then,"
said
the
Scotch
preacher,
"as
I
was
thinking.
Now
let
me
instruct
you
in
the
art.
Being
right-handed,
your
helve
must
bow
out--so.
No
first-class
chopper
uses
a
straight
handle."
He
fell
to
explaining,
with
gusto,
the
mysteries
of
the
bowed
handle,
and
as
I
listened
I
felt
a
new
and
peculiar
interest
in
my
task
This
was
a
final
perfection
to
be
accomplished,
the
finality
of
technique!
So
we
sat
with
our
heads
together
talking
helves
and
axes,
axes
with
single
blades
and
axes
with
double
blades,
and
hand
axes
and
great
choppers'
axes,
and
the
science
of
felling
trees,
with
the
true
philosophy
of
the
last
chip,
and
arguments
as
to
the
best
procedure
when
a
log
begins
to
"pinch"--until
a
listener
would
have
thought
that
the
art
of
the
chopper
included
the
whole
philosophy
of
existence--as
indeed
it
does,
if
you
look
at
it
in
that
way.
Finally
I
rushed
out
and
brought
in
my
old
axe-handle,
and
we
set
upon
it
like
true
artists,
with
critical
proscription
for
being
a
trivial
product
of
machinery.
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