Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/521

Rh yourself. You remember, perhaps, that Jesus was a carpenter. You recall good Adam Bede and Dinah Morris. You see again the touching little wooden saints and angels on the stalls of the Antwerp Cathedral, and quite before you know it the occupations of the woodworker have become idealized and have passed from labor into joy. It is pleasant, too, to go again from day to day, and, as one term melts into another, to note the growing skill, the quickened intelligence, the greater aliveness on the part of the little workers. At first they are so awkward and helpless; they seem to have so small control over their organisms, and they are half ashamed of their pitiful little efforts. But all this changes. There comes not only skill, but a sense of skill, and a sturdy self-reliance that amuses while it pleases you. They seem to be passing into control of themselves and to know it. They are delightfully unconscious of you, and quite regardless, too, of your criticism, unless indeed it coincide with their own. They soon come to know whether a piece of work is good or not, and are as generous in praising the skill of a neighboring worker as they are frank in ridiculing his failures. I should like to give you an instance of this sturdiness: I had once a very solemn little boy in my science classes, whose delight it was to read Forney's Catechism of the Locomotive. He kept a little notebook in which he entered his difficulties in the form of questions. When he had a sufficient cargo of these, perhaps ten or a dozen, he would come sailing into the lecture room after school and present them one by one. I had answered seven or eight of such questions one afternoon, when we came to some detail of the steam cut-off. I could only answer on general principles, and told him that the answer was a partial one. He looked at me very solemnly and said: "I will take this question to Mr. Whitaker. I think he can answer it better than you can." I was immensely pleased.

But, as I say, the first impression on going into these workshops is not with the work, but with the workers, and I think it is high commendation when in any school you are more taken up with the children than with the process.

The work in joinery mainly involves the use of the saw, plane, chisel, and rule. Hammer and nails, sandpaper, glue, and shellac are taken for granted. The sandpaper and shellac are secondary, and are quite discountenanced if used to cover up defects. The term joinery is well chosen. The work covers all sorts of joints and frames, and joinable and fittable things. The wood turning, I think, is less valuable than the stricter hand work, though it does undoubtedly cultivate an accuracy and delicacy of touch, combined with quickness that might not result from slower operations. It is also possible that the inartistic forms produced by our turning mills and