For Paul Bunyan’s loggers only cared to feel effects; they had no wish to think about causes. They would make a reality out of any fancy that delighted them; they never inquired beyond their pleasures. When they were told that they were making history they heard the statement with a thrill, but they did not pretend to know what it was all about. As for inventions, they used them joyfully, but they thought that Paul Bunyan’s new devices just happened. “We always sharpened our axes by rollin’ rocks down-hill,” the loggers would say. “We’d run alongside, holdin’ the ax blades on the stones as they rolled. But in the Big Dust country they was no rocks an’ no hills, so ol’ Paul made grindstones.” That was their story of the invention of the grindstone, an invention to which Paul Bunyan had given weeks of intense thought. And as for industry, why, a man just went out and did what old Paul told him to do. Oratory was great stuff; it made a man feel powerful good to listen to it; but, holy mackinaw! how was a man to remember all the things that old Paul said? But they did like oratory; yes, they liked it right well. Now Paul Bunyan came to know that his men were great only in the performance of their work. They were not comprehenders and creators. They could hardly distinguish between knowledge and fancy. Thus the great logger came to doubt the existence of women. He came to consider all the loggers’ ideas as fancies and drolleries, little men’s nonsense. He seldom listened to them; and as time went on he forgot women along with the other notions with which the loggers amused themselves. In oration after oration Paul Bunyan emphasized the fact that logging was the greatest industry, and that loggers, therefore, were the greatest laborers; they should have no pride or thought outside the operations of Paul Bunyan. They believed this finally; and then their bunkhouse songs and stories were all about work in the woods and the river drives, and women were very seldom thought about. Johnny Inkslinger’s oratorical medicine swamped them with ideas one time; and later they were seduced into poetry; but they had become bully loggers again in the He Man country.