Two Logs Crossing: John Haskell's Story

4.2/5 ( ratings)

This is an absorbing and deeply moving adventure story of a young boy who went fur trapping with an Indian, in the northern woods of New York State, to pay back his father's debt and support his widowed mother and younger brothers and sisters. But it is more than that. Walter D. Edmonds tells how and why John Haskell grew up as he did.
"It is a very simple story and is concerned partly with what other people did for John, but mostly with what John did for himself. And it is also a true story, for, though John Haskell is an imaginary name, there was a boy named Thomas Fortain who learned about crossing his stream in just this way. As a matter of fact, every man who has ever made anything of his life has had to learn to use two logs where two logs are needed. There is no trick and easy way to dependence, either for a man or a country.
"To be able to do for oneself in one's own way was the dream which first brought some men to this land. There are a few people who confuse it with becoming rich, but money is not the American Dream and never has been. Money can be made of anything you choose, but a man's life is made of the courage, independence, decency and self-respect he learns to use. That was what the Judge, in his own peculiar way, taught John Haskell. And he also taught him that being independent does not mean looking out solely for one's own interest. A man can only be free if his neighbors are also."