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famous axe

hly_2009

New Member
chinese
Hi, everyone:

People are like machines: they wear out..... However a machine can always be repaired. A good mechanic with a stock of spare parts can keep it going indefinitely. Eventually, no part of the original may remain, but it still carries on, like .

Could you tell me the meaning of underlined part?
What is "famous axe"?

Best wishes
I guess it is not as famous as all that if neither of us know the story of Lincoln's axe!

It must mean that Lincoln (I imagine the USA president) had an axe that he used to mend, and this story is "famous" (presumably to Americans!)
I believe it is George Washington's axe.

There is an apochrophyl story of George Washington having chopped down a cherry tree. When confronted by his father he was supposed to have said, "I cannot lie father, I chopped down the cherry tree." The axe used for this is subject to many stories.

So when someone says, "I have George Washington's original axe that chopped down the cherry tree, however the handle has been replaced 3 times and the head has been replaced twice.", he is saying that the original he has is not an original at all.
Are all the famous stories about the same president? Why can't Lincoln have his own axe?

I must admit I DO know the "not lying about chopping down the tree" story.
Thank you, Suzi_br, Packard
:-）
This is a old joke. I've heard lots of comedians tell it.

"I've had this axe for fifty years. It's had three new heads and seven new handles." The joke being that it's no longer the same axe.

I guess the joke was originally told by or about a President.

It's "famous" because it's an old joke, and everyone knows the punchline.
I'm sure this ancient joke has nothing to do with George Washington. And until today, I had never heard of a connection with Abraham Lincoln.
The ancient joke is not always about an axe.
It may also be about a hammer or a broom - and possibly much more.
I'd always understood this creaky old gag was told of some axe or other to be found in the Tower of London. Perhaps the axe that separated the two halves of Mary Queen of Scots. Or otherwise.

I know the story of Lincoln Washington and the tree-chopping but wouldnt've said the axe played more than a supporting role in it.
Abraham Lincoln, at age 22, was a laboring person who could wield his axe well enough that he earned the sobriquet, "rail-splitter." The axe that he used was not famous except it was referred to as famous by writers of Lincoln's biography or in biographical sketches. The axe figures in Lincoln's biography authentically in the expression, if I can paraphrase, "Lincoln set aside the axe and took up the law at at 22." Washington's myth was the story about the cherry tree; a tree that he is supposed to have chopped down, and when confronted by his father, George said, "I cannot tell a lie, father, it was I . . . ." Again, if I can paraphrase.
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