Now do you step exultingly upon the prostrate trunk, which you forthwith proceed to cut up into about fourteen-foot lengths, chopping all the branches close off, and throwing the smaller on to your brush piles. It is a common mistake of new immigrants, who are naturally enough pleased with the novel spectacle of falling trees, to cut down so many before they begin to chop them into lengths, that the ground is wholly encumbered, and becomes a perfect chaos of confused and heaped-up trunks and branches, which nothing but the joint operation of decay and fire will clear off, unless at an immense waste of time and trouble. To an experienced axeman, these first attempts at chopping afford a ready text for all kinds of ironical comments upon the unworkmanlike appearance of the stumps and "cuts," which are generally--like those gnawn off by beavers in making their dams--haggled all round the tree, instead of presenting two clear smooth surfaces, in front and rear, as if sliced off with a knife. Your genuine axeman is not a little jealous of his reputation as a "clean cutter"--his axe is always bright as burnished silver, guiltless of rust or flaw, and fitted with a handle which, with its graceful curve and slender proportions, is a tolerable approach to Hogarth's "line of beauty;" he would as soon think of deserting his beloved "bush" and settling in a town! as trust his keen weapon in the hands of inexperience or even mediocrity. With him every blow tells--he never leaves the slightest chip in the "cut," nor makes a false stroke, so that in passing your hand over the surface thus left, you are almost unable to detect roughness or inequality.