The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it, the outset
    anywhere,
The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette, The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags; The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons, The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm’d faces, The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves, The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless
    impatience of restraint,
The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the
    solidification;
The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and
    sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,
Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of
    snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,
The glad clear sound of one’s own voice, the merry song, the natural
    life of the woods, the strong day’s work,
The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the
    bed of hemlock-boughs and the bear-skin;
The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,
The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,
The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them
    regular,
Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they
    were prepared,
The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their
    curv’d limbs,
Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by
    posts and braces,
The hook’d arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe, The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail’d, Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers, The echoes resounding through the vacant building:  The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way,
The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully
    bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,
The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands rapidly
    laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the
    trowels striking the bricks,
The bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place,
    and set with a knock of the trowel-handle,
The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the
    steady replenishing by the hod-men;
Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew’d log shaping it toward
    the shape of a mast,
The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color’d chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes, The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats,
    stays against the sea;
The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth