That might be calculated to postpone
What evidently nothing could conclude.
The thing that made me more and more afraid
Was that we’d ground it sharp and hadn’t known,
And now were only wasting precious blade.
And when he raised it dripping once and tried
The creepy edge of it with wary touch,
And viewed it over his glasses funny-eyed,
Only disinterestedly to decide
It needed a turn more, I could have cried
Wasn’t there danger of a turn too much?
Mightn’t we make it worse instead of better?
I was for leaving something to the whetter.
What if it wasn’t all it should be? I’d
Be satisfied if he’d be satisfied.

PAUL’S WIFE

PAUL’S WIFE

To drive Paul out of any lumber camp
All that was needed was to say to him,
“How is the wife, Paul?”—and he’d disappear.
Some said it was because he had no wife,
And hated to be twitted on the subject;
Others because he’d come within a day
Or so of having one, and then been jilted;
Others because he’d had one once, a good one,
Who’d run away with someone else and left him;
And others still because he had one now
He only had to be reminded of,—
He was all duty to her in a minute:
He had to run right off to look her up,
As if to say, “That’s so, how is my wife?
I hope she isn’t getting into mischief.”
No one was anxious to get rid of Paul.
He’d been the hero of the mountain camps
Ever since, just to show them, he had slipped
The bark of a whole tamarack off whole,
As clean as boys do off a willow twig
To make a willow whistle on a Sunday
In April by subsiding meadow brooks.
They seemed to ask him just to see him go,
“How is the wife, Paul?” and he always went.
He never stopped to murder anyone
Who asked the question. He just disappeared—
Nobody knew in what direction,
Although it wasn’t usually long
Before they heard of him in some new camp,
The same Paul at the same old feats of logging.
The question everywhere was why should Paul
Object to being asked a civil question—

A man you could say almost anything to
Short of a fighting word. You have the answers.
And there was one more not so fair to Paul:
That Paul had married a wife not his equal.
Paul was ashamed of her. To match a hero,
She would have had to be a heroine;
Instead of which she was some half-breed squaw.
But if the story Murphy told was true,
She wasn’t any one to be ashamed of.