- end_line
- 4925
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4865
- text
- Hark! the crow again. Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Hang the
process, and hang the fellow that sent it! If you have not land or cash,
go and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. Be
jolly!’
Now this was the way--through the imperative intimations of the
cock--that I came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my
debts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. Thus made at
ease again, I renewed my search for the noble cock. But in vain, though
I heard him every day. I began to think there was some sort of deception
in this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my
barns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gaily
mischievous. But no--what ventriloquist could so crow with such an
heroic and celestial crow?
At last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had
sawed and split my wood in March--some five-and-thirty cords of it--and
now he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and
spare, with a long, saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye,
which offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but
undepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat.
This man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all
day long in a driving snowstorm, and never wink at it. He never spoke
unless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw--snow, snow, snow. The
saw and the snow went together like two natural things. The first day
this man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it
sitting on his buck in the snowstorm. From my window, where I was
reading Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I saw him in the act. I burst
out of doors bare-headed. ‘Good heavens!’ cried I; ‘what are you doing?
Come in. _This_ your dinner!’
He had a hunk of stale bread and another hunk of salt beef, wrapped in a
wet newspaper, and washed his morsels down by melting a handful of fresh
snow in his mouth. I took this rash man indoors, planted him by the
fire, gave him a dish of hot pork and beans, and a mug of cider.
‘Now,’ said I, ‘don’t you bring any of your damp dinners here. You work
by the job, to be sure, but I’ll dine you for all that.’
He expressed his acknowledgments in a calm, proud, but not ungrateful
way, and dispatched his meal with satisfaction to himself, and me also.
It afforded me pleasure to perceive that he quaffed down his mug of
cider like a man. I honoured him. When I addressed him in the way of
business at his buck, I did so in a guardedly respectful and deferential
manner. Interested in his singular aspect, struck by his wondrous
intensity of application at his saw--a most wearisome and disgustful
occupation to most people--I often sought to gather from him who he was,
what sort of a life he led, where he was born, and so on. But he was
mum. He came to saw my wood, and eat my dinners--if I chose to offer
them--but not to gabble. At first I somewhat resented his sullen silence
under the circumstances. But better considering it, I honoured him the
more. I increased the respectfulness and deferentialness of my address
toward him. I concluded within myself that this man had experienced hard
times; that he had had many sore rubs in the world; that he was of a
solemn disposition; that he was of the mind of Solomon; that he lived
calmly, decorously, temperately; and though a very poor man, was,
nevertheless, a highly respectable one. At times I imagined that he
might even be an elder or deacon of some small country church. I thought
it would not be a bad plan to run this excellent man for President of
the United States. He would prove a great reformer of abuses.
- title
- Chunk 1