“I have heard of you,” said the other, extending his hand but not rising. “I am John Rogers Inkslinger, the master figurer, the one and only Real American surveyor. But you must excuse me now, for I am endeavoring to solve the one problem that has ever baffled me. I have been working on it steadily for two months, and still the answer evades me.” He at once began figuring again, and Paul Bunyan, a little awed, had no words to say at that moment. He had no idea of what a surveyor might be, and he feared that John Rogers Inkslinger was something greater than himself. He would find out. So he said: “I am a figurer also, though not a great one. Yet I might help you. What is your problem?” “I am looking for Section 37,” said John Rogers Inkslinger. “Section 37?” “Yes. I have only found thirty-six sections in each of the townships which I have surveyed here. There should be thirty-seven.” Paul Bunyan was delighted that he could solve the problem so easily. “When I first logged off lower Twin Rivers valley,” he said, “I had no logging crews, but only Babe, my big blue ox. The method I used was to hitch Babe to a section of timber--this ox of mine, Mr. Inkslinger, can pull anything that man can walk on--, snake it to the river, shear off the trees, and then haul the logged off land back to its place. I handled a township a week in this fashion; but I always left Section 37 in the river on Saturday night, and the stream would wash it away. Now I judge that you survey the land as I measured it; consequently, you have only found thirty-six sections in each township.” “Bless my soul!” cried John Rogers Inkslinger admiringly. “I should have looked you up before. But I supposed you were an ordinary man of the forests. You would certainly make a great surveyor. You must leave this common life you are leading and come with me. Together we will soon have every section of land in the country staked out perfectly.” “I have a different idea,” said Paul Bunyan. Whereupon he unloosed his eloquence, and for the rest of the day his richest phrases were lavished on the surveyor. And this man, sure of the greatness of his own accomplishments, listened with strong doubts for a long time. But at last he was convinced that logging was the greatest of all occupations and that Paul Bunyan towered far above him as a hero. “I can only think of you with awe and admiration,” he said at last. “But I have my own work, inconsequential as it now seems. So I cannot become your figurer at present. Think, Mr. Bunyan, of Real America’s uncharted rivers, her unstaked plains, her unplumbed lakes! It is my mission to--to----”