the intermediate hours hitting wooden balls, or lounging
in a straw chair under a deck awning, had become
tiresome. What he needed was to get down to Nature
and hug the sod, and if there wasn't any sod then
he would grapple with whatever took its place.

Muggles dropped his legs to the floor, straightened
his back, beckoned to a servant, motioned for a telegraph
blank--exertion is tabooed at the Magnolia--
untelescoped a gold pencil hooked to his watch-chain
and wrote as follows:

"Thanks. Coming Tuesday."




II



Wabacog covers a shaved place in a primeval forest
which slopes to a lake of the same name. Covering
this bare spot are huge piles of sawed lumber--
Monteith's axe-razors did the shaving--surrounding
an enormous mill surmounted by a smokestack of
wrought iron topped with a bird-cage spark arrester,
the whole flanked by a runway emerging from the
lake, up which climb in mournful procession the
stately bodies of fallen monarchs awaiting the cutting