"But I haven't heard Carlstrom refer to Sweden for years," I said. "Is
it homesickness, or just old age?"
"There ye have it, Davy; the nail right on the head!" exclaimed the
Scotch Preacher. "Is it homesickness, or is he just old and tired?"
With that we fell to talking about Carlstrom, the gunsmith. I have known
him pretty nearly ever since I came here, now more than ten years
ago--and liked him well, too--but it seemed, as Dr. McAlway talked that
evening, as though we were making the acquaintance of quite a new and
wonderful person. How dull we all are! How we need such an artist as the
Scotch Preacher to mould heroes out of the common human clay around us!
It takes a sort of greatness to recognize greatness.
In an hour's time the Scotch Preacher had both Harriet and me much
excited, and the upshot of the whole matter was that I promised to call
on Carlstrom the next day when I went to town.
I scarcely needed the prompting of the Scotch Preacher, for Carlstrom's
gunshop has for years been one of the most interesting places in town
for me. I went to it now with a new understanding.
Afar off I began to listen for Carlstrom's hammer, and presently I heard
the familiar sounds. There were two or three mellow strokes, and I knew
that Carlstrom was making the sparks fly from the red iron. Then the
hammer rang, and I knew he was striking down on the cold steel of the
anvil. It is a pleasant sound to hear.
Carlstrom's shop is just around the corner from the main street. You may
know it by a great weather-beaten wooden gun fastened over the doorway,
pointing in the daytime at the sky, and in the night at the stars. A
stranger passing that way might wonder at the great gun and possibly say
to himself:
"A gunshop! How can a man make a living mending guns in such a peaceful
community!"
Such a remark merely shows that he doesn't know Carlstrom, nor the shop,
nor _us_.
I tied my horse at the corner and went down to the shop with a peculiar
new interest. I saw as if for the first time the old wheels which have
stood weathering so long at one end of the building. I saw under the
shed at the other end the wonderful assortment of old iron pipes,
kettles, tires, a pump or two, many parts of farm machinery, a broken
water wheel, and I don't know what other flotsam of thirty years of
diligent mending of the iron works of an entire community. All this, you
may say--the disorder of old iron, the cinders which cover part of the
yard but do not keep out the tangle of goldenrod and catnip and boneset
which at this time of the year grows thick along the neighbouring
fences--all this, you say, makes no inviting picture. You are wrong.
Where honest work is, there is always that which invites the eye.
I know of few things more inviting than to step up to the wide-open
doors and look into the shop. The floor, half of hard worn boards half
of cinders, the smoky rafters of the roof, the confusion of implements
on the benches, the guns in the corners--how all of these things form
the subdued background for the flaming forge and the square chimney
above it.
At one side of the forge you will see the great dusty bellows and you
will hear its stertorous breathing. In front stands the old brown anvil
set upon a gnarly maple block. A long sweep made of peeled hickory wood
controls the bellows, and as you look in upon this lively and pleasant
scene you will see that the grimy hand of Carlstrom himself is upon the
hickory sweep. As he draws it down and lets it up again with the
peculiar rhythmic swing of long experience--heaping up his fire with a
little iron paddle held in the other hand--he hums to himself in a high
curious old voice, no words at all, just a tune of contented employment
in consonance with the breathing of the bellows and the mounting flames
of the forge.
As I stood for a moment in the doorway the other day before Carlstrom
saw me, I wished I could picture my friend as the typical blacksmith
with the brawny arms, the big chest, the deep voice and all that. But as
I looked at him newly, the Scotch Preacher's words still in my ears, he
seemed, with his stooping shoulders, his gray beard not very well kept,
and his thin gray hair, more than ordinarily small and old.
I remember as distinctly as though it were yesterday the first time
Carlstrom really impressed himself upon me. It was in my early blind
days at the farm. I had gone to him with a part of a horse-rake which I
had broken on one of my stony hills'.
"Can you mend it?" I asked.
If I had known him better I should never have asked such a question. I
saw, indeed, at the time that I had not said the right thing; but how
could I know then that Carlstrom never let any broken thing escape him?
A watch, or a gun, or a locomotive--they are all alike to him, if they
are broken. I believe he would agree to patch the wrecked chariot of
Phaëthon!
A week later I came back to the shop.
"Come in, come in," he said when he saw me.
He turned from his forge, set his hands on his hips and looked at me a
moment with feigned seriousness.
"So!" he said. "You have come for your job?"
He softened the "j" in job; his whole speech, indeed, had the engaging
inflection of the Scandinavian tongue overlaid upon the English words.
"So," he said, and went to his bench with a quick step and an air of
almost childish eagerness. He handed me the parts of my hay-rake without
a word. I looked them over carefully.
"I can't see where you mended them," I said.
You should have seen his face brighten with pleasure! He allowed me to
admire the work in silence for a moment and then he had it out of my
hand, as if I couldn't be trusted with anything so important, and he
explained how he had done it. A special tool for his lathe had been
found necessary in order to do my work properly. This he had made at his
forge, and I suppose it had taken him twice as long to make the special
tool as it had to mend the parts of my rake; but when I would have paid
him for it he would take nothing save for the mending itself. Nor was
this a mere rebuke to a doubter. It had delighted him to do a difficult
thing, to show the really great skill he had. Indeed, I think our
friendship began right there and was based upon the favour I did in
bringing him a job that I thought he couldn't do!
When he saw me the other day in the door of his shop he seemed greatly
pleased.
"Come in, come in," he said.
"What is this I hear," I said, "about your going back to Sweden?"
"For forty years," he said, "I've been homesick for Sweden. Now I'm an
old man and I'm going home."
"But, Carlstrom," I said, "we can't get along without you. Who's going
to keep us mended up?"
"You have Charles Baxter," he said, smiling.
For years there had been a quiet sort of rivalry between Carlstrom and
Baxter, though Baxter is in the country and works chiefly in wood.
"But Baxter can't mend a gun or a hay-rake, or a pump, to save his
life," I said. "You know that."
The old man seemed greatly pleased: he had the simple vanity which is
the right of the true workman. But for answer he merely shook his head.
"I have been here forty years," he said. "and all the time I have been
homesick for Sweden."
I found that several men of the town had been in to see Carlstrom and
talked with him of his plans, and even while I was there two other
friends came in. The old man was delighted with the interest shown.
After I left him I went down the street. It seemed as though everybody
had heard of Carlstrom's plans, and here and there I felt that the
secret hand of the Scotch Preacher had been at work. At the store where
I usually trade the merchant talked about it, and the postmaster when I
went in for my mail, and the clerk at the drug store, and the
harness-maker. I had known a good deal about Carlstrom in the past, for
one learns much of his neighbours in ten years, but it seemed to me that
day as though his history stood out as something separate and new and
impressive.
When he first came here forty years ago I suppose Carlstrom was not
unlike most of the foreigners who immigrate to our shores, fired with
faith in a free country. He was poor--as poor as a man could possibly
be. For several years he worked on a farm--hard work, for which, owing to
his frail physique, he was not well fitted. But he saved money
constantly, and after a time he was able to come to town and open a
little shop. He made nearly all of his tools with his own hands, he
built his own chimney and forge, he even whittled out the wooden gun
which stands for a sign over the door of his shop. He had learned his
trade in the careful old-country way. Not only could he mend a gun, but
he could make one outright, even to the barrel and the wooden stock. In
all the years I have known him he has always had on hand some such
work--once I remember, a pistol--which he was turning out at odd times
for the very satisfaction it gave him. He could not sell one of his
hand-made guns for half as much as it cost him, nor does he seem to want
to sell them, preferring rather to have them stand in the corner of his
shop where he can look at them. His is the incorruptible spirit of the
artist!
What a tremendous power there is in work. Carlstrom worked. He was up
early in the morning to work, and he worked in the evening as long as
daylight lasted, and once I found him in his shop in the evening,
bending low over his bench with a kerosene lamp in front of him. He was
humming his inevitable tune and smoothing off with a fine file the nice
curves of a rifle trigger. When he had trouble--and what a lot of it he
has had in his time!--he worked; and when he was happy he worked all the
harder. All the leisurely ones of the town drifted by, all the children
and the fools, and often rested in the doorway of his shop. He made them
all welcome: he talked with them, but he never stopped working. Clang,
clang, would go his anvil, whish, whish, would respond his bellows,
creak, creak, would go the hickory sweep--he was helping the world go
round!
All this time, though he had sickness in his family, though his wife
died, and then his children one after another until only one now
remains, he worked and he saved. He bought a lot and built a house to
rent; then he built another house; then he bought the land where his
shop stands and rebuilt the shop itself. It was an epic of homely work.
He took part in the work of the church and on election days he changed
his coat, and went to the town hall to vote.
[Illustration: "THE CHILDREN ... OFTEN RESTED IN THE DOORWAY OF HIS
SHOP"]
In the years since I have known the old gunsmith and something of the
town where he works, I have seen young men, born Americans, with every
opportunity and encouragement of a free country, growing up there and
going to waste. One day I heard one of them, sitting in front of a
store, grumbling about the foreigners who were coming in and taking up
the land. The young man thought it should be prevented by law. I said
nothing; but I listened and heard from the distance the steady clang,
clang, of Carlstrom's hammer upon the anvil.
Ketchell, the store-keeper, told me how Carlstrom had longed and planned
and saved to be able to go back once more to the old home he had left.
Again and again he had got almost enough money ahead to start, and then
there would be an interest payment due, or a death in the family, and
the money would all go to the banker, the doctor, or the undertaker.
"Of recent years," said Ketchell, "we thought he'd given up the idea.
His friends are all here now, and if he went back, he certainly would
be disappointed."
A sort of serenity seemed, indeed, to come upon him: his family lie on
the quiet hill, old things and old times have grown distant, and upon
that anvil of his before the glowing forge he has beaten out for himself
a real place in this community. He has beaten out the respect of a whole
town; and from the crude human nature with which he started he has
fashioned himself wisdom, and peace of mind, and the ripe humour which
sees that God is in his world. There are men I know who read many books,
hoping to learn how to be happy; let me commend them to Carlstrom, the
gunsmith.
I have often reflected upon the incalculable influence of one man upon a
community. The town is better for having stood often looking into the
fire of Carlstrom's forge, and seeing his hammer strike. I don't know
how many times I have heard men repeat observations gathered in
Carlstrom's shop. Only the other day I heard the village school teacher
say, when I asked him why he always seemed so merry and had so little
fault to find with the world.
"Why," he replied, "as Carlstrom, the smith says, 'when I feel like
finding fault I always begin with myself and then I never get any
farther,'"
Another of Carlstrom's sayings is current in the country.
"It's a good thing," he says, "when a man knows what he pretends to
know."
The more I circulated among my friends, the more I heard of Carlstrom.
It is odd that I should have gone all these years knowing Carlstrom, and
yet never consciously until last week setting him in his rightful place
among the men I know. It makes me wonder what other great souls about me
are thus concealing themselves in the guise of familiarity. (This
stooped gray neighbour of mine whom I have seen so often working in his
field that he has almost become a part of the landscape--who can tell
what heroisms may be locked away from my vision under his old brown
hat?)
On Wednesday night Carlstrom was at Dr. McAlway's house--with Charles
Baxter, my neighbour Horace, and several others. And I had still another
view of him.
I think there is always something that surprises one in finding a
familiar figure in a wholly new environment. I was so accustomed to the
Carlstrom of the gunshop that I could not at once reconcile myself to
the Carlstrom of Dr. McAlway's sitting room. And, indeed, there was a
striking change in his appearance. He came dressed in the quaint black
coat which he wears at funerals. His hair was brushed straight back from
his broad, smooth forehead and his mild blue eyes were bright behind an
especially shiny pair of steel-bowed spectacles. He looked more like
some old-fashioned college professor than he did like a smith.
The old gunsmith had that pride of humility which is about the best
pride in this world. He was perfectly at home at the Scotch Preacher's
hearth. Indeed, he radiated a sort of beaming good will; he had a native
desire to make everything pleasant. I did not realize before what a fund
of humour the old man had. The Scotch Preacher rallied him on the number
of houses he now owns, and suggested that he ought to get a wife to keep
at least one of them for him. Carlstrom looked around with a twinkle in
his eye.
"When I was a poor man," he said, "and carried boxes from Ketchell's
store to help build my first shop, I used to wish I had a wheelbarrow.
Now I have four. When I had no house to keep my family in, I used to
wish that I had one. Now I have four. I have thought sometimes I would
like a wife--but I have not dared to wish for one."
The old gunsmith laughed noiselessly, and then from habit, I suppose,
began to hum as he does in his shop--stopping instantly, however, when
he realized what he was doing.
During the evening the Scotch Preacher got me to one side and said:
"David, we can't let the old man go."
"No, sir," I said, "we can't."
"All he needs, Davy, is cheering up. It's a cold world sometimes to the
old."
I suppose the Scotch Preacher was saying the same thing to all the other
men of the company.
When we were preparing to go, Dr. McAlway turned to Carlstrom and said:
"How is it, Carlstrom, that you have come to hold such a place in this
community? How is it that you have got ahead so rapidly?"
The old man leaned forward, beaming through his spectacles, and said
eagerly:
"It ist America; it ist America."
"No, Carlstrom, no--it is not all America. It is Carlstrom, too. You
work, Carlstrom, and you save."
Every day since Wednesday there has been a steady pressure on Carlstrom;
not so much said in words, but people stopping in at the shop and
passing a good word. But up to Monday morning the gunsmith went forward
steadily with his preparations to leave. On Sunday I saw the Scotch
Preacher and found him perplexed as to what to do. I don't know yet
positively, that he had a hand in it, though I suspect it, but on Monday
afternoon Charles Baxter went by my house on his way to town with a
broken saw in his buggy. Such is the perversity of rival artists that I
don't think Charles Baxter had ever been to Carlstrom with any work. But
this morning when I went to town and stopped at Carlstrom's shop I found
the gunsmith humming louder than ever.
"Well, Carlstrom, when are we to say good-by?" I asked.
"I'm not going," he said, and taking me by the sleeve he led me over to
his bench and showed me a saw he had mended. Now, a broken saw is one of
the high tests of the genius of the mender. To put the pieces together
so that the blade will be perfectly smooth, so that the teeth match
accurately, is an art which few workmen of to-day would even attempt.
"Charles Baxter brought it in," answered the old gunsmith, unable to
conceal his delight. "He thought I couldn't mend it!"
To the true artist there is nothing to equal the approbation of a rival.
It was Charles Baxter, I am convinced, who was the deciding factor.
Carlstrom couldn't leave with one of Baxter's saws unmended! But back of
it all, I know, is the hand and the heart of the Scotch Preacher.
The more I think of it the more I think that our gunsmith possesses many
of the qualities of true greatness. He has the serenity, and the humour,
and the humility of greatness. He has a real faith in God. He works, he
accepts what comes. He thinks there is no more honourable calling than
that of gunsmith, and that the town he lives in is the best of all
towns, and the people he knows the best people.
Yes, it _is_ greatness.
X