eight o'clock
Only the best old-growth maple , birch and beech were cut for fuel -- great trees two and three feet in diameter . The trunks were cut into eight-foot lengths , rolled on the ox-sleds with levers , and then hauled home to the yard in front of the wood-house , where they lay in four huge piles till March , when all hands turned to , with axes and saws , and worked it up . It was zero weather that week , but bright and clear , with spicules of frost glistening on every twig ; and I recollect how sharply the tree trunks snapped -- those frost snaps which make `` shaky '' lumber in Maine . Addison , Halstead and I , with one of the old Squire 's hired men , Asa Doane , went to the wood-lot at eight o'clock that morning and chopped smartly till near eleven . Indeed , we were obliged to work fast to keep warm . Addison and I then stuck our axes in a log and went on the snow crust up to the foot of a mountain , about half a mile distant , where the hardwood growth gave place to spruce . We wanted to dig a pocketful of spruce gum .