Contemplate a wilderness, reaching from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the great lakes and the majestic St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, every acre of which was covered with tall trees which had to be cut away one by one, not with some great machine which mowed them down in broad swaths like the grass of a meadow, but by a single arm and a single axe.

In his own feverish day Dick Savage cut a literary swath more wide than enviable, but when he is viewed from the unsympathetic light of the present he seems merely a clever vagabond.

I stuck my whetstone in my hip-pocket, bent forward and cut the first short sharp swath in the clover.

Beyond, and extending over all the middle ground, are somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes; and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra waving their magnificent banners.

I watch, the mowers as they go Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row; With even stroke their scythes they swing, In tune their merry whetstones ring; Behind the nimble youngsters run And toss the thick swaths in the sun; The cattle graze; while, warm and still, Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill, And bright, when summer breezes break, The green wheat crinkles like a lake.