HENCEFORTH I CALL YE NOT SERVANTS BUT FRIENDSXXIX. LOG-ROLLING
HENCEFORTH I CALL YE NOT SERVANTS BUT FRIENDS
Vachelslipped near Heaven’s Peak and turned a double somersault downward, buffeting his head with his huge pack (crammed with canned goods, loaves, blankets, and what not) and then I picked him up and found he had sprained his ankle.
“Don’t think I’m hurt,” said the poet. “I yelled because I was scared. I’ll be all right in a few minutes.”
He didn’t mind the pain, but he loathedbeing beaten. Nevertheless he was down and out. “We’ll go on to-morrow,” said he. “We’ll go on next day.”
“Here we are, and here we remain,” said I, “till the ankle has recovered. We can stay a week or two weeks, and I’ll go back for more food. So let’s make up our minds to it.”
So we stayed by a flat-rocked stream on a grand slope in a forest of stately pines and firs. Vachel sat on his blankets like a sultan. And he speedily forgot his ankle and the mountains and Heaven’s Peak, and began to tell me the story of Elbert Hubbard, from the time when he travelled in Larkin’s soap to the time when he wrote “Who Took the Lid off Hell?” and went down in the Lusitania. And then he told me the substance of “A Self-made Businessman’s Letters to his Son,” that unashamed best seller which portrayed the benevolent soul of a Chicago packer before Upton Sinclair dared. Then he told me a fantastic story of how ten ne’er-do-well men of Springfield were found ready to die for the Flag. Then he told to me from memory Edgar Allan Poe’s story of King Pest, and the ghouls of the forest crept close to us to listen. Then he told me of the prairie-schoonerswhich used to have inscribed on them “Pike’s Peak or bust!”
“Heaven’s Peak or bust,” said I, maliciously pointing to his swollen ankle. “Lindsay, essaying to climb Heaven’s Peak, slipped downward,” I went on facetiously, imitating the style of my letters to theEvening Post. He smiled.
“How yer feelin’?” I interjected.
“I’m feelin’ fine,” said he.
“Shall we get to Canada?”
“I’ll be all right to-morrow.”
“We ought to have gone further whilst the goin’ was good, eh?”
“I’m sorry, Stephen,” said he apologetically.
“But this is good?”
“It’s good enough for me.”
“All right.”
Bringingin wood for a big fire is rather a tedious job, but I hit on a sporting way of doing it all by myself, and doing it better. We were at seven thousand feet, and the avalanches and spring floods and storms had wrought havoc among the trees. Fine dead trunks lay in scores on the mighty slope of the mountain. Our fire was at the foot of a slippery graniteslide. So I took a stout young pine-tree, and began to lever the great dead trees and set them rolling downward. Vachel was perched on a rock above the fire, and the logs arrived at the embers below like colliding locomotives, with a great bump and showers of sparks. It was possible to lever and roll downwards logs that were thirty or forty feet long, and we pulled the great lumps of their sprawling resinous roots on to the fire.
We slept that night among the granite shelves, and the pine-roots roared as they burned, and the great rocks beside the fire cracked under the heat with a sort of earthquake thud which registered a buffet on our bodies ten yards away.
We stayed four days in this wonderful spot, and I became fascinated with log-rolling. Even Vachel, with his ankle, hobbled after me and tried to do it too. We talked of political and literary log-rolling, log-rolling for one’s friends. “I’m all for it,” said the poet. “Log-rolling is a virtue.”
Then he recounted to me the origin of the expression—log-rolling. “It is a Western term,” said the poet. “It also comes from thelife of the pioneers. You know how it was; the settler chose the site of his log-cabin or of his new barn, and then went into the forest and felled the number of trees necessary, and he left them lying where they had fallen, and then called his friends together for a festive occasion. They all worked together for him, and rolled his logs to the most convenient spot where they could be piled to make his home. Of course he always gave his friends a luncheon first, and then they went off and rolled his logs home for him.”
“And I like that,” said the poet. “No man can hope to do much in this world without the help of friends. And I for one would not want to.”
Go to it then, ye log-rollers of the literary world, ye friends, we’ll lunch ye, we’ll give you, coffee with a kick of a mule in it, and fried corned-beef hash fit for the best friend of the Grand Vizier’s cook. And he, as you know, fares better than the Sultan himself.
Who rolled home Shakespeare’s logs?We did: we helped to do it.All the world has given a hand.Were they lunched first?Ah, I doubt it.But that was not Shakespeare’s fault,He was a jolly fellow!
Who rolled home Shakespeare’s logs?We did: we helped to do it.All the world has given a hand.Were they lunched first?Ah, I doubt it.But that was not Shakespeare’s fault,He was a jolly fellow!
Who rolled home Shakespeare’s logs?
We did: we helped to do it.
All the world has given a hand.
Were they lunched first?
Ah, I doubt it.
But that was not Shakespeare’s fault,
He was a jolly fellow!
N.B.—According to Frederick Dallenbaugh, writing to theNew York Post, the real log-rolling commences after the logs have been brought to the site:“The foundation logs for the house having been duly notched and fixed in position, another tier is placed on top of them, and then another, and so on till the log wall is of the prescribed height. Now, it is obvious that it would be difficult to lift the logs up on to this growing wall. Primitive science then comes to the builder’s aid. Other logs are placed at an incline against those already established in their position and the logs that are to surmount the lower logs are rolled up the incline into place.“From this came the invitations sent out by the prospective builder to come to his log-rolling.”
N.B.—According to Frederick Dallenbaugh, writing to theNew York Post, the real log-rolling commences after the logs have been brought to the site:
“The foundation logs for the house having been duly notched and fixed in position, another tier is placed on top of them, and then another, and so on till the log wall is of the prescribed height. Now, it is obvious that it would be difficult to lift the logs up on to this growing wall. Primitive science then comes to the builder’s aid. Other logs are placed at an incline against those already established in their position and the logs that are to surmount the lower logs are rolled up the incline into place.
“From this came the invitations sent out by the prospective builder to come to his log-rolling.”