Kitabı oku: «Forests of Maine», sayfa 3

CHAPTER V.
THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT

Marco took dinner that day at the tavern alone, and, after dinner, he carried a cup of tea to Forester,—but Forester was asleep, and so he did not disturb him.

In the afternoon he went out to play. He amused himself, for half an hour, in rambling about the tavern yards and in the stables. There was a ferocious-looking bull in one of the yards, chained to a post, by means of a ring through his nose. Marco looked at the bull a few minutes with great interest, and then began to look about for a long stick, or a pole, to poke him a little, through the fence, to see if he could not make him roar, when, instead of a pole, his eye fell upon a boy, who was at work, digging in a corner of a field near, behind the barn.

The boy's name was Jeremiah. He was digging for worms for bait. He was going a fishing. Marco determined to go with him.

Jeremiah furnished Marco with a hook and a piece of sheet lead to make a sinker of, and Marco had some twine in his pocket already; so that he was soon fitted with a line. But he had no pole. Jeremiah said that he could cut one, on his way down to the river, as they would pass through a piece of woods which had plenty of tall and slender young trees in it.

He succeeded in getting a pole in this manner, which answered very well; and then he and Jeremiah went down to the river. They stood upon a log on the shore, and caught several small fishes, but they got none of much value, for nearly half an hour. At last, Jeremiah, who was standing at a little distance from Marco, suddenly exclaimed:

"Oh, here comes a monstrous great perch. He is coming directly towards my hook."

"Where? where?" exclaimed Marco. And Marco immediately drew out his hook from the place where he had been fishing, and walked along to the log on which Jeremiah was standing.

"Where is he?" said Marco, looking eagerly into the water.

"Hush!" said Jeremiah; "don't say a word. There he is, swimming along towards my hook."

"Yes," said Marco, "I see him. Now he's turning away a little. Let me put my line in, too."

Marco extended his pole and dropped his hook gently into the water. He let it down until it was near the perch. The poor fish, after loitering about a minute, gradually approached Marco's hook and bit at it.

Jeremiah, seeing that he was in danger of losing his fish, now called out to Marco to take his line out. "It is not fair," said he, "for you to come and take my fish, just as he was going to bite at my hook. Go away."

But it was too late. As Jeremiah was saying these words, the fish bit, and Marco, drawing up the line, found the fish upon the end of it. As the line came in, however, Jeremiah reached out his hand to seize the fish, and Marco, to prevent him, dropped the pole and endeavored to seize it too.

"Let go my fish," said Jeremiah.

"Let alone my line," said Marco.

Neither would let go. A struggle ensued, and Marco and Jeremiah, in the midst of it, fell off into the water. The water was not very deep, and they soon clambered up upon the log again, but the fish, which had been pulled off the line in the contention, fell into the water, and swam swiftly away into the deep and dark parts of the water, and was seen no more. He was saved by the quarrels of his enemies.

Marco, who was not so much accustomed to a wetting as Jeremiah was, became very angry, and immediately set off to go home to the tavern. Jeremiah coolly resumed his position on the log, and went to fishing again, paying no heed to Marco's expressions of resentment.

Marco walked along, very uncomfortable both in body and mind. His clothes were wet and muddy, and the water in his shoes made a chuckling sound at every step, until he stopped and took his shoes off, and poured the water out. It was nearly sunset when he reached the tavern. He found Forester better. He had left his bed, and had come down into the parlor. He was reclining on the sofa, reading a book, when Marco came in.

Marco advanced towards him, and began to make bitter complaints against Jeremiah. In giving an account of the affair, he omitted all that part of the transaction which made against himself. He said nothing, for instance, about his coming to put his line in where Jeremiah was fishing, and while a fish was actually near Jeremiah's hook, but only said that he caught a fish, and that Jeremiah came and took it away.

"But what claim had Jeremiah to the fish?" asked Forester.

"He had no claim at all," said Marco.

"You mean, he had no right at all," said Forester.

"Yes," said Marco.

"He had a claim, certainly," rejoined Forester; "that is, he claimed the fish. He pretended that it was his. Now, on what was this claim or pretence founded?"

"I don't know," said Marco, "I am sure. I only know he had no right to it, for I caught the fish myself, and he was going to take it away."

Forester paused a moment, and then resumed:

"I don't think that you have given me a full and fair account of the transaction; for I cannot believe that Jeremiah would have come and taken away the fish without any pretext whatever. You must have omitted some important part of the account, I think."

Marco then told Forester that Jeremiah said that the fish was just going to bite at his hook; and, after several other questions from Forester, he gradually acknowledged the whole truth. Still, he maintained that it was his fish. He had a right to put in his line, he said, wherever he pleased, whether another boy was fishing or not; the fish belonged to the one who caught him; and, before he was caught, he did not belong to anybody. It was absurd, he maintained, to suppose that the fish became Jeremiah's, just because he was swimming near his hook.

"Sometimes one can judge better of a case," said Forester, "by reversing the condition of the parties. Suppose that you had been fishing, and a large fish had come swimming about your hook, and that Jeremiah had then come to put his hook in at the same place, should you have thought it right?"

"Why, I don't know," said Marco.

"It is doubtful. Now, it is an excellent rule," continued Forester, "in all questions of right between ourselves and other persons, for us to give them the benefit of the doubt."

"What does that mean?" asked Marco.

"Why, if a man is tried in a court for any crime," replied Forester, "if it is clearly proved that he is innocent, of course he goes free. If it is clearly proved that he is guilty, he is convicted. But if neither the one nor the other can be proved, that is, if it is doubtful whether he is innocent or guilty, they give him the benefit of the doubt, as they term it, and let him go free."

"I should think that, when it is doubtful," said Marco, "they ought to send him back to prison again till they can find out certainly."

"No," said Forester, "the jury are directed to acquit him, unless it is positively proved that he is guilty. So that, if they think it is doubtful, they give him the benefit of the doubt, and let him go free. Now, in all questions of property between ourselves and others, we should all be willing to give to others the benefit of the doubt, and then the disputes would be very easily settled, or rather, disputes would never arise. In this case, for instance, it is doubtful whether you had a right to come and interfere while the fish was near his hook; it is doubtful whether he did or did not have a sort of right to try to catch the fish, without your interfering; and you ought to have been willing to have given him the benefit of the doubt, and so have staid away, or have given up the fish to him after you had caught it."

"But I don't see," said Marco, "why he should not have been willing to have given me the benefit of the doubt, as well as I to have given it to him."

"Certainly," said Forester; "Jeremiah ought to have considered that there was a doubt whether he was entitled to the fish or not, and to have been willing to have given you the benefit of the doubt; and so have let you kept the fish. Each, in such a case, ought to be willing to give up to the other."

"And then which of us should have it?" asked Marco.

"Why, it generally happens," said Forester, in reply, "that only one of the parties adopts this principle, and so he yields to the other; but if both adopt it, then there is sometimes a little discussion, each insisting on giving up to the other. But such a dispute is a friendly dispute, not a hostile one, and it is very easily settled."

"A friendly dispute!" exclaimed Marco; "I never heard of such a thing."

"Yes," said Forester. "Suppose, for instance, that, when you had caught your fish, you had said, 'There, Jeremiah, that fish is yours; he was coming up to your hook, and would have bitten at it if I had not put my line in;' and, then, if Jeremiah had said, 'No, it is not mine; it is yours, for you caught it with your hook;' this would have been a friendly dispute. It would have been very easily settled."

"I am sorry that I left my pole down at the river," said Marco. "I cut a most excellent pole in the woods, on my way down, and I left it there across the log. I mean to go down and get it early in the morning."

"No," said Forester; "we must be on our way up the river early to-morrow morning."

"How shall we go?" asked Marco.

"I have engaged a wagon here to take us to Bath, and there we shall find a stage."

Accordingly, early the next morning, Forester and Marco got into a wagon to go up the river to Bath, which is the first town of any considerable consequence which you meet in ascending the Kennebec river. Marco and Forester sat on the seat of the wagon, and a boy, who was going with them for the purpose of bringing the wagon back, sat behind, on a box, which had been put in to make a seat for him.

Marco said that he was very sorry that he had not time to go and get his fishing-pole.

"It would not do any good," said Forester, "for you could not carry it."

"Why, yes," said Marco, "we might put it on the bottom of the wagon, and let the end run out behind. It is pretty long."

"True," said Forester, "we might possibly get it to Bath, but what should we do with it then?"

"Why, then," said Marco, "we might put it on the top of the stage, I suppose. Would not they let us?"

"It would not be very convenient to carry a long fishing-pole, in that way, to Quebec," replied Forester, "through woods, too, half of the way, full of such poles. You might stop and get a cane or staff, if we find a place where there are some good ones. A cane would be of some service to you in walking up the hills, and that could be taken along with our baggage easily."

Marco said that he should like this plan very much; and, as they rode along, they looked out carefully for a place where there were slender saplings growing, suitable for canes.

"What kind of wood would you have?" asked Forester.

"I don't know," replied Marco; "which kind is the best?"

"The different woods have different qualities," replied Forester. "Some are light and soft, which are good qualities for certain purposes. Some are hard. Some are stiff, and some flexible. Some are brittle, and others tough. For a cane, now, do we want a hard wood or a soft one?"

"Hard," said Marco.

"Why?" asked Forester.

"Oh, so that it shall not get indented or bruised easily," replied Marco.

"A light wood or a heavy one?" asked Forester.

"Light," replied Marco, "so that it will be easy to carry."

"Stiff or flexible?" asked Forester.

"Stiff," replied Marco.

"Yes," said Forester. "Some kinds of wood grow straight, and others crooked."

"We want it straight," said Marco.

"Yes," replied Forester. "The pine grows very straight. If we could find some young pines, they would make us some beautiful-looking canes."

"And how is it with the other qualities?" asked Marco.

"Pine is very light," said Forester.

"That is good," said Marco.

"And soft," said Forester.

"That is not so well," said Marco.

"And it is very weak and brittle."

"Then it will not do at all," said Marco. "I want a good strong cane."

Just at this time, they were ascending a hill, and, after passing over the summit of it, they came to a place where Forester said he saw, in the woods, a number of young oaks and beeches, which, he said, would make good canes. The oak, he said, was very strong, and hard, and tough; so was the beech.

"Only there are two objections to them for canes," said Forester, as they were getting out of the wagon; "they are not so light as the pine, and then, besides, they are apt to grow crooked. We must look about carefully to find some that are straight."

"Which is the most valuable of all the kinds of wood?" asked Marco.

"The question is ambiguous," said Forester.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Marco.

"I mean, that it has two significations," replied Forester; "that is, the word valuable has two significations. Pine is the most valuable in one sense; that is, pine is, on the whole, most useful to mankind. But there are other kinds of wood which are far more costly."

"I should not think that pine would be so valuable," said Marco, "it is so weak and brittle."

"It is valuable," said Forester, "because, for the purpose for which men want the greatest quantities of wood, strength is not required. For boarding the outsides of buildings, for example, and finishing them within, which uses, perhaps, consume more wood than all others put together, no great strength is required."

"I think people want more wood to burn than to build houses with," said Marco.

"Yes," said Forester, "perhaps they do. They do in this country, I think, but perhaps not in Europe and other old countries. But pine, although it has no great strength, is an excellent wood for building, it is so soft and easily worked."

Forester's remarks, upon the different kinds of wood, were here interrupted by Marco's finding what he considered an excellent stick for a cane. When he had cut it, however, he found that it was not so straight as it had appeared to be while growing.

However, after some time spent in the selection, Marco and Forester both procured excellent canes.

"This is good, hard wood," said Marco, as he was trimming his cane, and cutting it to a proper length.

"Yes," said Forester; "it is beech, and beech is very hard."

After finishing their canes, they took their seats in the wagon again.

CHAPTER VI.
EBONY AND PINE

After riding along a short distance in silence, Marco introduced the subject of the different woods once more. He asked Forester which was the most costly of all the woods.

"Costly is not an ambiguous term," said Forester; "that means, which has the greatest money value."

"Yes," said Marco. "I suppose it is mahogany."

"O no," said Forester.

"Rose wood, then," said Marco. "It must be rose wood. My mother has a beautiful piano made of rose wood."

"No," said Forester. "Ebony is more costly than either rose wood or mahogany. They sell ebony by the pound."

"Where does ebony come from?" asked Marco.

"I don't know," replied Forester.

"I should like to know," said Marco. "How much do they sell it for, by the pound?"

"I don't know that, either," said Forester. "I know very little about it, only that it is a very costly wood, on account of some peculiar properties which it has, and its scarcity."

"What are the peculiar properties?" asked Marco.

"One is, its great hardness," said Forester. "It is very hard indeed. Another is, its color."

"What color is it?" asked Marco.

"Black," replied Forester,—"black as jet; at least, one kind is black as jet. There is a kind which is brown. It is called brown ebony."

"I don't think black is very pretty," said Marco.

"No," said Forester; "there does not seem to be much beauty in black, in itself considered; but then, for certain purposes, it is much handsomer than any other color would be; for a cane, for instance."

Marco looked at the beech cane which he had before him, and began to consider how it would look if it were black.

"I suppose I could paint my cane black," said he, after a moment's pause, "if you think it would be any better."

"No," said Forester; "I should prefer having it of its natural color. The bark of the beech has beautiful colors, if they are only brought out by a coat of varnish."

"Brought out?" repeated Marco.

"Yes," said Forester. "There is a kind of fine dust, or something like that, which dims the bark; but, when you put on oil or varnish, there is a sort of transparency given to the outside coating, which brings the natural color of the bark fully to view."

"Then I will get my cane varnished, when I get to Bath," said Marco.

"Ebony," said Forester, "is used a great deal where a contrast with ivory is wanted. Ebony is hard and fine-grained, like ivory, and it takes a high polish. So, whenever they want a contrast of black and white, they take ebony and ivory."

"When do they want a contrast between black and white?"

"One case," replied Forester, "is that of the keys of a piano forte. They want the short keys, which mark the semi-tones, of a different color from the others, so that the eye will catch them as quick as possible. So in a chess-board. They sometimes make chess-boards with alternate squares of ebony and ivory."

"I think it would be just as well to take common wood and paint it black," said Marco, "rather than pay so much money for ebony."

"No," said Forester, "that would not do so well. The paint would wear off; or, if it did not wear off by handling, still, if it got a little knock or hard rub, a part would come off, and that would show a little spot which would be of the natural color of the wood. This would look very badly."

"Then, besides, painted wood," continued Forester, "cannot be finished off so smoothly, and polished up so highly, as a wood which is black by nature. They have a way of staining wood, however, which is better than painting it."

"How is that done?" asked Marco.

"Why, they make a black stain," said Forester, "which they put upon the wood. This staining soaks in a little way, and blackens the fibres of the wood itself, beneath the surface. This, of course, will not wear off as easily as paint."

"I should not think it would wear off at all," said Marco.

"Yes," replied Forester, "for, if a cane is made of any wood stained black, after a time the wood itself wears away farther than the staining had penetrated. Then the fresh wood will come to view. So that, if you want anything black, it is much better to make it of a wood which is black all the way through.

"Besides," continued Forester, "ebony is a very hard wood, and it will bear knocks and rough usages much better than other kinds of wood which are softer. Once I made a carpenter an ebony wedge, to split his laths with."

"What are laths?" asked Marco.

"Laths are the thin split boards which are nailed upon the sides of a room before the plastering is put on. Sometimes laths are made very narrow, and are nailed on at a little distance from each other, so as to leave a crack between them. Then the plastering, being soft when it is put on, works into the cracks, and thus clings to the wood when it is dry and hard. If plastering was put on to smooth boards, or a smooth wall, it would all fall off again very easily."

"Yes," said Marco; "I have seen the plastering coming up through the cracks in the garret at your house in Vermont."

"The lath boards," continued Forester, "are sometimes made narrow, and nailed on at a little distance from each other, and sometimes they are wide boards, split up, but not taken apart, and then the cracks, which are made in splitting them, are forced open when the boards are nailed on. The way they do it, is this. They put the wide lath board down upon a plank, and make a great many cracks in it with an axe. Then they put it upon the wall, or ceiling, and nail one edge. Then they take a wedge and drive into one of the cracks, and force it open far enough to let the plastering in. Then they put in some more nails, in such a manner as to keep that crack open. Then they wedge open another crack, and nail again; and so on, until they have nailed on the whole board, so as to leave the cracks all open."

"And you made the carpenter an ebony wedge?" said Marco.

"Yes," said Forester. "He had had wedges made of the hardest wood that he could get, but they would soon become bruised, and battered, and worn out, with their hard rubbing against the sides of the cracks. At last, I told him I had a very hard kind of wood, and I gave him a piece of ebony. He made it into a wedge, and, after that, he had no more difficulty. He said his ebony wedge was just like iron."

"Was it really as hard as iron?" asked Marco.

"Oh, no," said Forester,—"but it was much harder than any wood which he could get. He thought it was a very curious wood. He had never seen any like it before."

"I should like some ebony," said Marco.

"Ebony would be an excellent wood to make a top of," said Forester, "it is so hard and heavy."

"I should like to have a top hard," said Marco, "but I don't think it would be any better for being heavy."

"Yes," said Forester; "the top would spin longer. The heavier a top is, the longer it will spin."

"Then I should like a top made of lead," said Marco.

"It would spin very long," said Forester, "if it was well made, though it would require more strength to set it a-going well. But lead would be soft, and thus would easily get bruised and indented. Besides, black would be a prettier color for a top than lead color. A jet black top, well polished, would be very handsome."

"Is black a color?" asked Marco. "I read in a book once that black and white were not colors."

"There are two meanings to the word color," said Forester. "In one sense, black is a color, and in another sense, it is not. For instance, if a lady were to go into a shop, and ask for some morocco shoes for a little child, and they were to show her some black ones, she might say she did not want black ones; she wanted colored ones. In that sense, black would not be a color.

"On the other hand," continued Forester, "she might ask for silk stockings, and if the shopkeeper were to ask her what color she wanted, she might say black. In that sense, black would be a color."

"Which is the right sense?" asked Marco.

"Both are right," said Forester. "When a word is commonly used in two senses, both are correct. The philosophers generally consider black not to be a color; that is, they generally use the word in the first sense."

"Why?" asked Marco.

"For this reason," replied Forester. He was going on to explain the reason, when suddenly Marco's attention was attracted by the sight of a long raft of logs, which was coming down the river. They had been riding at some distance from the river, and out of sight of it, but now it came suddenly into view, just as this raft was passing by. There were two men on the raft.

"See those men on the raft," said Marco. "They are paddling."

"No," replied Forester; "they are sculling."

"Sculling?" repeated Marco.

"Yes," replied Forester. "They always scull a raft. It is a different motion from paddling."

Marco watched the men attentively, examining the motion which they made in sculling, and considering whether he might not have sculled his raft to the shore in the same manner.

"What straight logs!" said Marco.

"Yes," replied Forester; "the pine tree grows up tall and straight, and without branches, to a great height. This is the source of some of its most valuable properties. It makes the wood straight-grained. That is, the fibres run smooth and regularly, from one end of the stem to the other."

Just at this time, Forester saw a large pine tree growing alone, by the side of the road they were travelling. This solitary tree had a great many branches growing out from the stem, in every part, from the top to the bottom.

"That is because the tree grows by itself," said Forester, "in the open field. Those that grow in the forest do not throw out branches from the stem, but they ran up to a great height, with only a little tuft of branches on the top."

"I don't see why they don't have branches in the woods," said Marco.

"Because," replied Forester, "where trees grow close together, the light and the air is excluded from the lower parts of the stems, and so branches cannot grow there. Nothing can grow without light and air."

"I've seen monstrous long potato sprouts grow in a dark cellar," said Marco.

"Yes," said Forester; "so have I. I did not think of that. But they don't grow very well."

"They grow pretty long, sometimes," replied Marco.

"At any rate," said Forester, "the branches of trees will not grow from the stems of the trees near the ground, in the woods; and this is of great importance, for, whenever a branch grows out, it makes a knot, extending in to the very centre of the tree. This would injure a pine log very much, as the knot would show in all the boards, and a knot is a great injury to a pine board, though it is of great benefit to a mahogany one."

"Why?" asked Marco.

"Because it gives the wood a beautiful variegated appearance when they get it smoothed. So that the more knotted and gnarled a log of mahogany is, the better. It makes the more beautiful wood. But in pine, it is not beauty, but facility of working, which is the great object. So they always want to get pine as smooth and straight-grained as possible. So that one of these trees that grow detached, in the fields, would not be of much value for lumber. It has so many branches, that the boards made from it would be full of knots."

"That is the reason, I suppose," said Marco, "why they don't cut them down, and make them into boards."

"Perhaps it is," replied Forester.

"Has pine any other very good qualities?" asked Marco.

"I believe it is quite a durable wood," said Forester. "At any rate, the stumps last a very long time in the ground. I have heard it said that there are some stumps in the state of Maine with the old mark of G. R. upon them."

"What does G. R. mean?" asked Marco.

"Georgius Rex," replied Forester,—"that is, George, the king. If there are any such, the mark on them means that they belonged to the king of England, before this country was separated from England. In those days, the king's workmen went into the forests to select and mark the trees which were to be cut down for the king's use, and these marks were left upon the stumps."

"And how long ago was that?" asked Marco.

"O, it must have been sixty or seventy years ago. But I can hardly believe that the stumps would last as long as that."

"I mean to ask some of the men, when I get up in the woods, how long the stumps do last," said Marco.

"They last very long, I know," said Forester. "The people, after getting tired of waiting to have them rot out, tear them up with machines, and make fences of them."

"I don't see how they can make fences of stumps," said Marco.

"They put them in a row, with the roots in the air," replied Forester. "They make a funny-looking fence."

Just at this time Marco perceived a large town coming into view before them, which, Forester told him, was Bath. There were several ships building along the shore of the river.