There were times when he longed for the backwoods life; when the smell of
the pines and the firs and the juniper got into his nostrils; when he
heard, in imagination, the shouts of the river-men as they chopped down
the trees, sawed the boles into standard lengths, and plunged the big
timbers into the stream, or round the fire at night made call upon the
spirit of recreation. In imagination, he felt the timbers creaking and
straining under his feet; he smelt the rich soup from the cook's caboose;
he drank basins of tea from well-polished metal; he saw the ugly rows in
the taverns, where men let loose from river duty tried to regain civilian
life by means of liquor and cards; he heard the stern thud of a hard fist
against a piece of wood; he saw twenty men spring upon another twenty
with rage in their faces; he saw hundreds of men arrived in civilization
once again striking for their homes and loved ones, storming with life.
He saw the door flung open, and the knee-booted, corduroyed river-man,
with red sash around his waist and gold rings in his ears, seize the
woman he called wife and swing her to him with a hungry joy; he saw the
children pushed gently here, or roughly, but playfully, tossed in the air
and caught again; but he also saw the rough spirits of the river march
into their homes like tyrants returned, as it were, cursing and banging
their way back to their rightful nests.
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