{"id":"01KG6GMS08B9V49J6NQSN5KR0T","cid":"bafkreib7cy3mq7qdxowao4axo5idexil2kqugew7exa26qldnb4uqpxqne","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":4925,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":4865,"text":"Hark! the crow again. Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Hang the\r\nprocess, and hang the fellow that sent it! If you have not land or cash,\r\ngo and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. Be\r\njolly!’\r\n\r\nNow this was the way--through the imperative intimations of the\r\ncock--that I came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my\r\ndebts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. Thus made at\r\nease again, I renewed my search for the noble cock. But in vain, though\r\nI heard him every day. I began to think there was some sort of deception\r\nin this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my\r\nbarns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gaily\r\nmischievous. But no--what ventriloquist could so crow with such an\r\nheroic and celestial crow?\r\n\r\nAt last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had\r\nsawed and split my wood in March--some five-and-thirty cords of it--and\r\nnow he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and\r\nspare, with a long, saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye,\r\nwhich offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but\r\nundepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat.\r\nThis man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all\r\nday long in a driving snowstorm, and never wink at it. He never spoke\r\nunless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw--snow, snow, snow. The\r\nsaw and the snow went together like two natural things. The first day\r\nthis man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it\r\nsitting on his buck in the snowstorm. From my window, where I was\r\nreading Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I saw him in the act. I burst\r\nout of doors bare-headed. ‘Good heavens!’ cried I; ‘what are you doing?\r\nCome in. _This_ your dinner!’\r\n\r\nHe had a hunk of stale bread and another hunk of salt beef, wrapped in a\r\nwet newspaper, and washed his morsels down by melting a handful of fresh\r\nsnow in his mouth. I took this rash man indoors, planted him by the\r\nfire, gave him a dish of hot pork and beans, and a mug of cider.\r\n\r\n‘Now,’ said I, ‘don’t you bring any of your damp dinners here. You work\r\nby the job, to be sure, but I’ll dine you for all that.’\r\n\r\nHe expressed his acknowledgments in a calm, proud, but not ungrateful\r\nway, and dispatched his meal with satisfaction to himself, and me also.\r\nIt afforded me pleasure to perceive that he quaffed down his mug of\r\ncider like a man. I honoured him. When I addressed him in the way of\r\nbusiness at his buck, I did so in a guardedly respectful and deferential\r\nmanner. Interested in his singular aspect, struck by his wondrous\r\nintensity of application at his saw--a most wearisome and disgustful\r\noccupation to most people--I often sought to gather from him who he was,\r\nwhat sort of a life he led, where he was born, and so on. But he was\r\nmum. He came to saw my wood, and eat my dinners--if I chose to offer\r\nthem--but not to gabble. At first I somewhat resented his sullen silence\r\nunder the circumstances. But better considering it, I honoured him the\r\nmore. I increased the respectfulness and deferentialness of my address\r\ntoward him. I concluded within myself that this man had experienced hard\r\ntimes; that he had had many sore rubs in the world; that he was of a\r\nsolemn disposition; that he was of the mind of Solomon; that he lived\r\ncalmly, decorously, temperately; and though a very poor man, was,\r\nnevertheless, a highly respectable one. At times I imagined that he\r\nmight even be an elder or deacon of some small country church. I thought\r\nit would not be a bad plan to run this excellent man for President of\r\nthe United States. He would prove a great reformer of abuses.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6GK910Q5DQ0F8Y8A2E4V1N","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6GMS08F1GWVT8KMS32PF1N","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:10.728Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:55:16.722Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}