Sawdust; A Romance of the Timberlands

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIX. In the forests around Zanek there were many graveyards, growing vaster and more numerous every year; but no human beings slept there, and no human tears were shed within them. Each of those stretches of hillside--no longer a forest and not yet quite a field--marked a stage of transition in a vast work undertaken;for the stumps that stood there were the tombstones of the trees gone to the saw-mill, and the hillside itself was the cemetery of the dead forest. One winter sufficed to lay bare miles of country. Millions of ferns, pushing up through the earth on fine spring mornings, must have been disagreeably astonished to find the world so completely transformed since they settled to their winter sleep. The deep shade which they love is gone; mercilessly the sun glares down upon them; the forest trees under whose protection they have grown up are vanished; they are alone in the world, and now they stand and tremble unsheltered, mourning like orphans over their parents' graves. These spots will doubtless in a year or two yield good pasture, but meanwhile they are not of much use except to encarrip a picnic party at a season when sunshine is more welcome than shade. Exactly for such a purpose had such a spot been selected on a mild October day, rather more than a fortnight after the Emperor's visit. The Prince of Anthal Hessingen had not forgotten his gracious promise of shooting a few more of Herr Mayer's stags, but owing to an unlucky accident in Styria he was late in redeeming it. A dislocated knee is one of the most awkward things that can happen to a sportsman, and all that the skill of half-a-dozen extravagantly-paid doctors could do was to enable His Royal Highness to come in for a few belated shots. These shots--each a forlorn hope in itse...