Wood-hewer

But the present task was hateful to him; for any big-armed yokel, or common wood-hewer, might have done as much as he could do, and perhaps more, at it, and could have taken the same wage over it.

One of the officers thought it unavoidable that troops would abandon the “uniformity of the clean, smart, soldier, and substitute, in his stead, the [look of the] slovenly, undisciplined wood-hewer, sand-digger, and hod-carrier.”

"I must hasten," he said. “Old Peter Cobb, a wood-hewer, is dying.”

My stomach was hooked by an admixture of bewilderment and elation as I jogged, walked, ran, and sometimes ran, walked and jogged till I reached Biodun's house, my senior at school— breathing heavily like a wood-hewer.