I have just returned from a little trip up from the North Wisconsin
Railway, where I went to catch a string of codfish and anything else
that might be contagious.
Northern Wisconsin is the place where they yank a big wet log into a
mill and turn it into cash as quick as a railroad man can draw his
salary out of the pay-car. The log is held on a carriage by means of
iron dogs while it is being worked into lumber. These iron dogs are not
like those we see on the front steps of a brown stone front
occasionally. They are another breed of dogs.
The managing editor of the mill lays out the log in his mind and works
it into dimension stuff, shingles, bolts, slabs, edgings, two-by-fours,
two-by-eights, two-by-sixes, etc., so as to use the goods to the best
advantage, just as a woman takes a dress-pattern and cuts it so she
won't have to piece the front breadths and will still have enough left
to make a polonaise for last summer's gown.
I stood there for a long time watching the various saws and listening to
the monstrous growl and wishing that I had been born a successful
timber-thief instead of a poor boy without a rag to my back.
At one of these mills not long ago, a man backed up to get away from the
carriage and thoughtlessly backed against a large saw that was revolving
at the rate of about 200 times a minute. The saw took a large chew of
tobacco from the plug he had in his pistol pocket and then began on
him.
But there's no use going into the details. Such things are not cheerful.
They gathered him up out of the saw-dust and put him in a nail keg and
carried him away, but he did not speak again. Life was quite extinct.
Whether it was the nervous shock that killed him, or the concussion of
the cold saw against his liver that killed him no one ever knew.
The mill shut down a couple of hours so that the head sawyer could file
his saw, and then work was resumed once more.
We should learn from this never to lean on the buzz-saw when it moveth
itself aright.