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THE DOERS
BY
WILLIAM JOHN HOPKINS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO--DALLAS
SAN FRANCISCO
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY WILLIAM JOHN HOPKINS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
_School Edition_
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE--MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
CONTENTS
I. THE DIGGING-MEN STORY 1
II. THE MASON STORY 10
III. THE DINNER-TIME AND JONAH STORY 22
IV. THE CARPENTER STORY 34
V. THE WATER-MEN STORY 46
VI. THE SHINGLE AND CLAPBOARD STORY 57
VII. THE PLUMBER STORY 73
VIII. THE PAINTER STORY 86
IX. THE TREE-MEN STORY 101
X. THE CLEARING-UP STORY 113
XI. THE SETTING-OUT STORY 125
XII. THE POLE-MEN STORY 138
XIII. THE MOVING-MEN STORY 155
[Illustration]
I
THE DIGGING-MEN STORY
Once upon a time there was a little boy who was almost five years old.
And his mother used to let him wander about the garden and in the road
near the house, for there weren't many horses going by, and the men
who drove the horses that did go by knew the little boy and they were
careful.
So this boy wandered about and played happily by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always
wore his overalls. And wherever he went his cat went too.
One morning he saw some men come with a big cart and two horses, and
they stopped in a field near his house where there were some queer
boards nailed on sticks that were stuck in the ground; and the boards
turned corners, and there were strings across from one board to
another.
And the men got out of the big cart and unhitched the horses from the
cart, and the little boy thought he had better go there and see what
they were going to do.
So he went, dragging his cart behind him, with his shovel and his hoe
rattling in the bottom of it.
And his cat saw him going, and she ran on ahead with her bushy tail
sticking straight up in the air.
And the little boy came to the men and the horses and he stopped and
stood still.
And his cat stopped too, but she didn't stand still; she rolled over
on her back on the ground and wanted to play, but nobody would pay any
attention to her.
Pretty soon one of the men looked down and saw the little boy.
"Hello!" he said.
"Hello," said the little boy. "What are you going to do?"
"Why," said the man, "we're going to dig dirt."
"Are you going to dig a hole?" the little boy asked.
"Yes," said the man; "a great big hole."
"And what is the hole for?" the little boy asked. "Is it to plant
something in?"
"No," said the man, "it's going to be the cellar of a house."
"Oh," said the little boy, "is it? And do you think I could help you
dig? I've got my shovel and my cart."
"I'm afraid," said the man, "that it wouldn't do. You see that great
scoop?"
He pointed to a big iron scoop that was in the cart.
The little boy looked and nodded.
"Is that a scoop? What is it for?"
"The horses drag it, and a man takes hold of those two handles like
plough-handles, and it scoops the dirt right up."
The little boy nodded again.
"You can watch us if you want to," the man said then. "But you must be
careful not to get in the way of the horses."
"And can my kitty watch too?"
The man laughed and said his kitty could watch if she wanted to.
And the other men took pickaxes out of the cart, the handles of the
pickaxes and their iron heads, and each man slipped the head of his
pickaxe over the handle and gave it a tap on the ground to drive the
head on.
And they walked slowly in under the strings between the boards and
they got in a line.
And the little boy sat down on a stone that was just the right size
and watched them. His cat came and got right between his feet.
Then the man at the end of the line raised his pickaxe high above his
head, and the next man did the same, and then the third man, and so on
to the other end of the line.
And the first man struck his pickaxe down hard into the ground, and it
made the ground grunt, _Mnh!_
And the second man did the same, and the ground gave another grunt,
_Mnh!_
And then the third man did the same thing, and so on to the other end
of the line.
Then the first man was ready again, so that the sound of the pickaxes
was as regular as the ticking of the tall clock.
When the pickaxe was in the ground, each man gave a kind of a pry that
loosened the dirt.
And when they had picked, the men went ahead a little short step and
picked a new place and left the loosened dirt behind, so that, pretty
soon, they were walking on the dirt that they had loosened.
The cat had got tired of lying between the little boy's feet and
having no attention paid to her, so she got up and ran off a little
way, and stopped and looked back, but the little boy wouldn't look.
So she walked back, with her bushy tail straight up in the air, and
rubbed against the little boy's legs.
Still the little boy didn't notice her. And the reason why he didn't
notice her was that the horses were being hitched to the big iron
scoop.
As soon as the horses were hitched to the scoop, they started walking
along; and the scoop turned right over on its face, upside down,
because the man didn't have hold of the handles.
And the horses dragged the scoop, upside down, and it bumped over the
stones and made a ringing kind of noise, and they dragged it in
between the boards and over the dirt that had been loosened by the
pickaxes, and when they got to the end of the loosened dirt, they
stopped.
[Illustration: THE DIRT-SCOOP]
Then the man turned the horses around, and he took hold of the handles
of the scoop and turned it over; and he kept hold of the handles, and
the horses started, and the scoop dug into the loose dirt and scooped
it right up and carried it along.
Now the field, where they were digging the cellar, sloped down behind
where the cellar was to be, so that, when the horses came to that part,
they were walking down-hill.
And the man let go of the handles of the scoop, and it turned over and
dumped its load of dirt.
And when the horses heard the scoop bumping and banging on the ground,
they turned around of their own accord and walked back to get a new
load.
And so they did until they had scooped out all the dirt that had been
loosened.
Then the pickaxe men went back and began again on the part that had
been scooped, but the horses had to wait for the dirt to be loosened,
and they stood outside of the cellar.
It was beginning to look a little bit like a cellar now, but a very
shallow one.
And the little boy was getting tired of watching the pickaxes rise and
fall and of listening to the noise the ground made. So he got up.
And his cat saw him getting up, and she ran to him, and she saw that
he was going to the man with the horses, so she ran ahead, with her
bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.
The man saw them coming, and he looked at the little boy and smiled.
"I've got to go now," the little boy said, when he had come to the man.
"So soon?" asked the man. "I hope you aren't tired."
"I think I'd better go home," the little boy said. "P'r'aps my mother
would like to see me."
"I shouldn't wonder if she'd like to see you pretty often," the man
said. "You tell her that you'll be safe here. I'll keep my eye on you."
"How will you get your eye on me?" the little boy asked.
The man laughed. "Will you come again?"
"I'll come to-morrow," the little boy said. "P'r'aps I'll come this
afternoon. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said the man.
And he watched the little boy as he trudged away, dragging his cart,
with his hoe and his shovel rattling in the bottom of it, and with his
cat walking beside him and looking up into his face.
And that's all of this story.
II
THE MASON STORY
Once upon a time there was a little boy and he was almost five years
old. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with,
so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always
wore his overalls.
One morning he was sitting right down in the gravel of his front walk,
the walk that led to the front door of the house that he lived in, and
he had been digging in the gravel. The hole that he was digging was
square.
And he had picked the dirt all over with a big nail, and pried it
loose, and then he had pretended that his shovel was a big iron scoop
that could scoop the dirt out just the way the big scoop did when it
was dragged by the horses.
For he had been watching the men dig a cellar in the field next to his
house.
And his cat was there, rolling in the gravel and playing with the air.
Pretty soon his mother looked out of a window, and then she came
running out.
"My dear little boy," she said, "what are you digging?"
The little boy got up, and the cat scampered away a few feet, with her
bushy tail straight up in the air.
"I'm digging a cellar for a house," said the little boy.
"Oh," said his mother. "Well, don't you think you'd better build the
house over near the sand-pile? People coming in might not see this
house, and they might kick it over and walk on it. But the masons have
come to work on the real cellar."
"The masons?" the little boy asked.
"The men to build the cellar wall. You may go and watch them if you
like."
The little boy nodded again. Then he put his shovel into his cart, and
took hold of the handle of the cart. Then he looked back.
"Good-bye," he said.
"Good-bye, my dear little son," his mother said.
And she watched him trudging away, dragging his cart, with his shovel
and his hoe rattling in the bottom of it.
And his cat ran on ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in
the air.
The little boy saw a man hoeing slowly at something in a big shallow
wooden box.
And the something that he was hoeing at was all white and it slopped
here and there; and the hoe was all white, and the outside of the box
was all covered with slops of the same white stuff, and the man's
shoes were white, too, and the bottoms of his overalls.
And there was a pile of new sand that looked all moist and just right
to play in.
There was another man standing at the edge of the cellar and looking
down into it.
The cellar itself was so deep now that the little boy could just see
the tops of the hats of the men who were working in it.
The man who had been looking down into the cellar heard the shovel and
the hoe rattling in the cart and looked up.
"Hello!" he called.
"Hello," said the little boy. "What are you doing?"
"I'm just looking to see if the men do their work right. Come over
here and I'll show you."
So the little boy left his cart beside the pile of sand and walked
over to where the man was.
And the man met him and took hold of his hand; and they walked
together to the edge of the cellar and looked down into it, and the
man stooped down and kneeled on one knee, with his arm half around the
little boy so that he wouldn't fall in.
In the cellar the little boy saw a great many big stones that lay all
about the middle, where they had been dumped; and there were six men
working around the edge of the cellar building the wall.
In part of the cellar the wall had been begun and was about two feet
high; but in another part there was nothing but the smooth dirt at the
bottom, and the smooth sides of the cellar that went straight up.
And two of the men were digging a trench in the smooth bottom of the
cellar where the wall would be.
When they had the shallow trench dug for a few feet, one of the men
put down his shovel and went to the pile of stones.
And he found some stones that were the size he wanted, each of them
just about as big as he could carry in one hand. And he took two of
these and went to the trench and put them in.
Then he went to the pile and got two more, and he put them in the
trench, too. And so he did until the bottom of the trench was all
covered.
Then he got smaller stones and threw them in on top of the bigger ones;
and, on top of those, still smaller stones that were flattish.
The flat stones filled the trench up nearly to the top, and he didn't
put in any more but took up his shovel again and helped the other man
dig.
Then two of the other men came, and they looked at the trench to see
if it was all right.
Then they went to the pile of big stones and they picked out one of
the biggest, and they took their big iron crowbars and put the points
of the bars under the stone, to move it.
The little boy wondered.
"What are they going to do?" he asked. "Are they going to move it? Can
they move it?"
The man nodded.
"Easy enough," he said. "You watch."
And the men pried with their crowbars, and the big stone started from
its place and rolled down from the pile. And the men got it over to
the trench, sometimes prying it with their crowbars and sometimes
rolling it with their hands, and they set it in its place on top of
the small flat stones.
Then one of the men shut one of his eyes and squinted along the wall
that was done to see if the stone was just in the right place; and the
other man moved the stone with his crowbar just a little until it was
in exactly the right place.
Then they went to the pile again and got another big stone in the same
way, and they got it over to the trench and set it in its place beside
the first.
Then the men went to the pile again, and they picked out a stone that
was nearly as big as the bottom stones, and they hammered it with
great hammers and split off some thin, flat pieces.
That was to make it fit better in the place where it was to go. The
ground all about the wall was covered with thin, flat pieces that had
been hammered off other stones.
And they got a great thick board, and they put one end of the board on
top of the bottom stones which they had just put in the trench, and
they put the other end of the board on the ground in front of the
stone which they had been hammering, and they rolled the stone slowly
up the board until it came to the end.
And they rolled it off the end upon the bottom stones, and got it into
its place with their crowbars.
And where it did not fit well enough, they put in thin, flat pieces
that they picked up from the ground.
The man who knelt on one knee at the edge of the cellar told the
little boy about it as the men worked.
And, when the men had put in the little flat pieces of stone, one of
them looked up and smiled at the little boy and said that they called
the thin, flat pieces "chocks."
"Not woodchucks," he said, "but just chocks."
The little boy smiled and nodded. He had never seen a woodchuck, but
there was a picture of one in his animal-book. It wasn't a very good
picture.
"I guess," he said, "that they are stone-chucks."
All the men who heard him laughed. And they went to work again, and
the little boy turned to the man who was holding him.
"I've got to go now," he said, "and play in that pile of sand."
"All right," said the man. "You play there just as long as you want
to."
So the little boy went over to the man who was hoeing the white stuff.
It wasn't so white as it had been and it was thicker, just about like
nice mud.
And his cat came up from somewhere. The little boy didn't know where
she had been, but he didn't pay any attention to her. He just stood
and watched the man.
"What are you making?" he asked at last.
"I'm making mortar," the man said. "They put it in the cracks of the
wall, to hold it together."
"Oh," said the little boy. "Well, would you like to have me help you?"
"You might bring me a load of sand," said the man, "if you want to. I
shall have to put in more sand."
So the little boy went to his cart, and he threw out his hoe. He
wasn't careful where he threw it, and the handle of the hoe hit the
cat.
And the cat ran home as fast as she could go. But the little boy
didn't know it, he was so busy.
[Illustration: MAKING MORTAR]
And he backed the cart up to the sand-pile, and he took his shovel and
shoveled sand into the cart until the man said that was enough.
Then he took hold of the handle and pulled. It was heavier than he
thought it would be, but he pulled it over to the box of mortar. It
was only a few steps.
Then the man told him to shovel it in, a little at a time.
And the little boy shoveled it in slowly, and he felt very proud, for
he was helping to make real mortar.
And he kept on shoveling until the man said that was enough.
The man hoed the mortar for a few minutes, and then he took up a
queer-looking thing that he said was his hod.
It was made of two boards that were put together like a V with the
point down; and another board was nailed across one end, but the other
end was left open.
It was a kind of a trough; and a stick like a broom-handle stuck down
from the middle of it.
And the man filled this hod with mortar, and he turned around and put
the hod across one shoulder with the bottom of the trough resting on
his shoulder.
And he took hold of the stick, and he walked off, down a ladder into
the cellar.
And he dumped the mortar out of the hod on to a board near the men who
were building the wall. Then he came up again.
The little boy watched him until he had come up out of the cellar. And
he asked the man whether he would want any more sand, but the man said
that he wouldn't for some time.
So the little boy went and played in the sand-pile for a long time,
and, while he was playing, his cat came and rubbed against him. Then
the little boy got up.
"I've got to go now," he said to the mortar man. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said the man. "Come again."
"Yes," said the little boy, "I will."
And he put his shovel and his hoe into his cart, and he took hold of
the handle of the cart, and he walked off, with his shovel and his hoe
rattling behind him.
And his cat ran on ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in
the air.
And that's all of this story.
III
THE DINNER-TIME AND JONAH STORY
Once upon a time there was a little boy and he was almost five years
old. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with,
so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and hoe, and he always wore
his overalls when he was playing.
They were building a house in the field next to that little boy's
house, and he used to go there almost every day to watch the men and
to help.
One day it was late when he went, because his mother had taken him
with her down to the Square to do an errand, and when he came back he
had to change his clothes and put on his overalls. His mother wouldn't
let him wear his overalls down to the Square.
And when he had his overalls on, he hurried and got his cart and his
shovel and his hoe, and he called his cat, and she came running, with
her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.
And he hurried to the new house, dragging his cart; and his shovel and
his hoe rattled in the bottom of it.
The mortar man saw him.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello," said the little boy. "Did you wonder where I was?"
"I did that," said the mortar man.
"Well, I had to go on an errand with my mother," the little boy said,
"but I hurried and came as soon as I could, and here I am. Do you want
some sand?"
[Illustration: THE MORTAR MAN]
But the mortar man didn't want any more sand then. He filled his hod
with mortar, and he stooped down and took the hod of mortar on his
shoulder, and he went trotting to the ladder, and he went down the
ladder.
Then the little boy couldn't see him, because the cellar walls were
done and the carpenters had come, and they had put on the great square
beams that lie on top of the cellar walls, and they had put in the
beams that go across from one side to the other and hold up the floors.
But there were some men in the cellar, for the little boy could hear
them laughing and talking.
And the mortar man had told him that they were the bricklayers who
were building the chimneys and two of the masons who were smearing
mortar over all the cracks of the wall, so that the water wouldn't
leak through from the ground into the cellar.
The little boy wished that he could see those men, but he was afraid
that it wouldn't be being careful to go down that ladder, and he
didn't think he could do it, anyway, for the steps were too far apart.
So he looked about and he saw the man who had held the handles of the
scoop, and who had held him that other day, while he looked down into
the cellar and saw the masons building the wall. He was called the
foreman.
The foreman was glad to see the little boy, and beckoned to him.
And the little boy went, and the foreman took hold of his hand, and
they went together right up on the floor beams; but the foreman
carried him when they got up there, because there weren't any boards
on the beams yet, and the little boy might have fallen through between
the beams.
And when they got to the right place, they both stooped over and
looked down between the beams, through a great big square hole. A
chimney would come up through the hole, and the bricklayers were
building it.
The little boy was surprised to see how enormous a chimney had to be
at the bottom.
There were four men laying bricks as fast as ever they could, but it
was all the little boy could do to watch one of the men.
First, he took up a brick from the pile, with his left hand, and he
generally tossed the brick up a little way in the air, and it turned
over before he caught it again, so that he saw all sides of it; and,
with the flat trowel which he held in his right hand, he scooped up
some mortar.
And he slapped the trowelful of mortar down on the bricks where he
wanted to put that other brick, and he gave a little wipe with the
trowel around the edges, and he pressed the brick that he was holding
in his left hand down into place, and he tapped the brick with the
handle of the trowel, and the mortar squeezed out all around, and,
with his trowel, he scooped off the mortar that had squeezed out, and
he slapped that down in a new place.
Then he began again, and reached down for another brick.
The little boy was so busy watching the bricklayer that he forgot all
about the masons who were putting mortar on the wall.
But, pretty soon, all the men said something to all the other men, and
they stopped laying bricks, and they began to take off their overalls.
"What are they going to do now?" the little boy asked.
"They are going to eat their dinner," said the foreman. "Come on."
So the foreman and the little boy got down on the ground again, and
the foreman set the little boy down, and he took his hand, and they
went back, near the pile of sand, where there were some nice boards to
sit on.
And the men all came trooping out of the cellar, and each man went and
got his dinner from the place where he had put it when he came there
in the morning.
Some of the men had their dinner in pails and some had theirs in
baskets and one man had his in a newspaper, so that he wouldn't have
anything to carry home at night.
And the men came where the nice boards were, and they sat around
anywhere, and they opened their pails and their baskets and the
newspaper bundle, and they began to eat their dinners.
The little boy had sat down, too, but he didn't feel very comfortable.
He thought that, perhaps, he ought to have brought his dinner, but he
didn't know about it, so how could he have brought it?
And he got up and started home, but the foreman called after him and
asked him why he was going.
And the little boy said that he was going to bring his dinner, too,
and eat it with them.
And the foreman said that they would give him some of their dinner,
and that there were all sorts of nice things that their wives had
cooked.
And the little boy said that he would ask his mother, and he would
hurry as fast as he could.
In a few minutes, the little boy came back to the place where the men
were sitting.
He walked very carefully, because he was carrying a cup of milk; and
his cat walked beside him and looked up at the cup of milk all the
time, and, every few steps, she stood on her hind legs and tried to
reach the milk.
But she couldn't, and the little boy didn't pay any attention to her.
When he got to the men, the foreman asked him what his mother said.
And the little boy told him that his mother said he could have some of
their things if they didn't give him any cake or any pie, and that any
of the men could have their tea or coffee warmed for them if they
would take it to his house.
The men who had tea or coffee were glad to hear that, and they went to
the little boy's house and took their tea and their coffee.
Some had it in bottles and some had it in the covers of their
dinner-pails, with the cup to drink out of fitting over the top.
The foreman didn't go, and the little boy sat down close to him and
began to drink his milk; but his cat bothered him by trying to get it.
So the little boy gave her a push with his foot.
"Get away, kitty," he said. "You can't have any."
Then the foreman laughed, and he broke off a piece of white bread and
gave it to the little boy. And the little boy took a great enormous
bite.
"Is it good?" the foreman asked.
The little boy nodded. "M--m--m!" he said. He couldn't really say
anything because he had his mouth full of bread.
"My wife made it," said the foreman. "I think she's a very fine cook."
The little boy put his mouthful of bread in his cheek so that he could
speak.
"Yes," he said, "I think so too."
The foreman laughed again, and then the men began to come back.
They all wanted to give the little boy something; and some of them
gave him other little pieces of white bread, and some of them gave him
little corners of their sandwiches, and some gave him little pieces of
dark-colored bread.
And he ate his pieces of bread and drank his milk, and the foreman
gave him two of some little thin molasses cookies that were all
crackly and crumbly; for little crackly cookies like those aren't much
like cake.
When all the men had finished their dinner and had drunk their tea and
their coffee, they went and put their pails and their baskets away and
then came back and sat down again, and some of them got out their
pipes and filled them.
The little boy was very happy, and he sat on the board with his hands
in his lap, and he smiled.
"Now," said the foreman, "there's time for a story before you go to
work again. Do any of you know a story?"
He looked all about and, last of all, he looked at the little boy. "Do
you know any story?"
"Well," the little boy said, "I know about Jonah."
"Will you tell us about Jonah?" the foreman asked. "I should like to
hear that story."
"Yes," said the little boy, "I will tell it. Well, once upon a time
there was a man named Jonah. And he had to go to Nineveh to tell the
people how bad they were. But he didn't want to go; so he didn't. He
ran away in a ship.
"And when he got into the ship, he lay down and went to sleep. And the
ship started, and pretty soon the wind began to blow terribly hard,
and there were 'normous great waves, and the ship got all tippy. And
the sailors were afraid, and they threw out the things that were in
the ship.
"So the captain went to the place where Jonah was. 'Wake up, Jonah!'
he said. 'Why don't you get up and pray?'
"Then the sailors talked together, and said that it must be Jonah's
fault. 'Who is this Jonah, anyway?' they said. 'Where did he come from,
and what is he doing here? Let's ask him.'
"So they did. And Jonah told them, and said: 'I guess you'll have to
throw me out of the ship.' So they threw Jonah over into the water,
and there wasn't any more storm.
"And Jonah, he went down and down and down in the water, and I guess
he thought he was going to be drowned. Then a great, big whale came
along and saw Jonah, and he opened his mouth wide and went at Jonah
and swallowed him. But he didn't bite him or chew him or anything.
"But Jonah was terribly scared, 'cause he couldn't hardly guess where
he was. The insides of the whale were all wet, and it was all pitchy
dark in there.
"There wasn't anything for Jonah to do but to think, and after he had
thought for a long, long time, the whale up-swallowed him and spitted
him out on to the beach. And I s'pose Jonah went and washed his
clothes, because they were all whaley.
"And then he went to Nineveh and told them to be more better, and they
did be."
And that's all of Jonah.
IV
THE CARPENTER STORY
Once upon a time there was a little boy and he was almost five years
old. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with,
so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always
wore his overalls when he was playing.
They were building a house in a field near that little boy's house;
and, one morning, he had heard the sounds of hammers and of mallets
all the time he was at breakfast.
So he hurried to get through, and he slipped down from his chair and
took off his napkin and he wiped his mouth and he turned to his mother.
She was sitting still, smiling because he was in such a hurry.
"You seem to be in a good deal of a hurry," she said.
"Yes," he said, nodding, "I am. I think I had better go over to the
new house."
"To see whether the men are doing their work right?" she asked.
"You see, I have to help the mortar man," he explained. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye, dear," she said. Then she kissed him. "Be very careful."
"Yes, I will."
Then he went out, and he got his cart, and he put his shovel and his
hoe in it, and he called his cat; but no cat came. And he called her
again, but she didn't come then.
So he took up the handle of his cart, and he walked over to the new
house, dragging his cart behind him, with his shovel and his hoe
rattling in the bottom of it.
The mortar man was still there, hoeing mortar for the bricklayers to
use, for the chimneys weren't done yet.
"Hello," said the mortar man.
"Hello," the little boy said. "I came as soon as I could."
"Where's your kitty?" the mortar man asked. "You couldn't find her,
could you? Well, look around behind you."
The little boy looked around behind him.
He was standing with his back to the house, so that, when he looked
behind him he saw the new house and the carpenters who were working at
great beams which were on wooden horses that stood on the ground.
And he saw his cat, too. She was walking toward him, with her bushy
tail sticking straight up in the air.
But the little boy was too much interested in what the carpenters were
doing to pay much attention to his cat.
"What are those men doing?" he asked of the mortar man.
"The carpenters? They are cutting mortises in those girts. That is,
little holes in those big beams. The ends of other beams will be made
small enough to go in those holes, and they will hold the floor up."
"Mor--tar!" shouted one of the men who were building the chimney.
The mortar man hurried off with his hod of mortar, and the little boy
wandered over to where the carpenters were.
His cat went, too, but he left his cart by the pile of sand.
There were two carpenters there, and they both looked up and smiled.
They had great thick chisels and heavy wooden mallets in their hands,
and there was a big bit, or "borer," as the little boy called it,
lying on the ground between them. And I don't know why "borer" isn't a
better name for it.
There were some round holes in the beams which had been made by the
borer, and the men were making those round holes square with the
chisels.
One of the men had just finished a hole when the little boy came, and
he went ahead to the next round hole, and he put the edge of the
chisel carefully against the wood, and he struck it with the mallet.
_Plack!_ _Plack!_ _Plack!_ shrieked the mallet on the chisel.
_Ugh!_ _Ugh!_ _Ugh!_ the wood grunted, and it seemed to shiver when
the mallet struck.
[Illustration: CUTTING A HOLE]
Then there was a splintering noise and a part of the wood broke away.
_Plack!_ _Plack!_ _Plack!_ screamed the mallet again.
The wood grunted again, but it was of no use, and another piece broke
away.
And then the man hit the chisel again and another piece broke off, and
the chisel came through on the other side of the beam.
And the carpenter drove the chisel through at the other side of the
hole, in the same way; and what had been a round hole was a square one.
Then he laid the mallet down and took the chisel in both hands, and he
leaned over the square hole and made the sides all smooth with the
chisel.
Then he made a sort of sloping hole, a kind of a little square trench,
and it went from the side of the beam into the square hole.
Then he put his tools down and looked at the little boy again and
smiled.
"There!" he said. "That's done."
The little boy smiled back at him.
"Is it?" he said. "What goes in that hole? I could put my hand in it."
"It's not for little boys' hands," answered the carpenter. "The end of
a short beam goes in there. I'll show you. We have to make places for
the chimneys to come through and so people can go upstairs without
knocking their heads. Did you ever think of that?"
The little boy shook his head, and he came nearer. "Show me."
So the carpenter went to a little pile of short beams; and he took one
and brought it back.
And he turned the big beam on edge, and fitted the end of the little
beam into the hole.
The end of the little beam had already been made small, so that it
would go in.
"There," he said. "Now here, where I stand, will be the stairs for
people to go up, and there will be that other big beam on the other
side. We have to leave this big hole in the floor so that a man can go
on the stairs without hitting his head, you know. Everywhere else will
be a floor, except where the chimneys come through. Do you understand?"
The little boy nodded. He thought that he understood, although it was
not very easy to understand.
And while he was trying to understand better, there came a voice
behind him.
"Hello! I wondered where you were."
And he looked around and there was his friend the foreman, and the cat
had gone to meet him and was coming back beside him, and she was
looking up into the foreman's face, and her bushy tail was sticking
straight up into the air.
"Hello," said the little boy; and he leaned back against the horse
that the beam rested on.
"Your kitty," said the foreman, "came up here all by herself, and she
followed me about."
The little boy laughed.
"She's a funny kitty," he said.
The foreman stooped down.
"I think you'd better tell me your name," he said. "I like to know the
names of my friends."
"My name is David," the little boy answered.
"And mine is Jonathan," said the foreman quickly. "Think of that! Now,
Davie, come with me and let's see how the other men are getting on."
So David put his little hand into the foreman's big one, and they
started; and David saw some men putting up a great, tall beam on one
of the corners.
Two men were holding it, and another man reached up as high as he
could and nailed a board to it, and the other end of the board was
fastened down low, so that the tall beam shouldn't fall over when the
men let go.
"What are those men doing?" David asked. "That sticks up like my
kitty's tail, doesn't it?"
"So it does," the foreman said. "There'll be more of them presently,
sticking up all along every side."
"Will there? How many of those sticks will there be?"
"Oh, I don't know; more than fifty, I should think."
"A cat with fifty tails." And the little boy laughed. "Did you ever
see a kitty with fifty tails?"
"All sticking straight up in the air!" said the foreman. "That _would_
be funny. She'd look like a porcupine."
"What _is_ a porcupine?" David asked. "Did I ever see one?"
"I guess not," the foreman answered. "Anyway, I never did. It's a
little animal all covered with sharp things. It's just as if your
kitty's fur was about three or four times as long as it is, and every
hair was stiff and sharp. There's a great rattling as they walk, I'm
told. The Indians used to sew the quills--the sharp things--on their
soft leather slippers, because they looked pretty."
"Tell me some more about them," said David.
"I don't know any more. See, Davie, the men are putting up another
stick."
So David watched the men put up that stick, and he forgot about the
porcupine, which was what the foreman wanted.
And then he watched them put up another, and then another.
"They look as if they were the bones of the house," he said.
"So they do, Davie," the foreman said, "and so they are. And the whole
frame, before it's boarded in--before any boards are nailed on--looks
like the skeleton of a house, and so it is. They'll have pretty near
the whole frame up by the time you eat your supper; or to-morrow
morning, at any rate. Then you look and see. It's much the same way
that your body's made: your ribs and the other bones are the frame,
and inside you there are a lot of rooms, and it's all covered with
soft skin instead of boards."
"Am I? What are my ribs?"
"These bones." And the foreman stooped and ran his finger quickly down
David's ribs, and David shrieked with laughter.
"Tickles," said David. "Show me my ribs again."
"It isn't good for little boys to be tickled too much," said the
foreman. "Now we'll go over to the sand-pile for a while. I don't want
to take you into the house until they get the frame all up and some
floors down. It isn't safe."
So they turned around and went to the sand-pile, and the foreman
stayed there a little while and played in the sand.
Then he had to go away; and the mortar man had gone away, and nobody
was there but David and his cat.
And David thought that he would help the mortar man, so he filled his
cart with sand and dragged it over to the mortar box and shoveled it
in.
Then he took up the handle of his cart, and he called his cat, and he
walked along to his house, dragging his cart.
And his shovel rattled in the bottom of it, and his cat ran on before
him.
But he had forgotten his hoe. It was in the pile of sand.
And that's all of this story.
V
THE WATER-MEN STORY
Once upon a time there was a little boy and he was almost five years
old. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with,
so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always
wore his overalls when he was playing. And his name was David.
They were building a house in a field near David's house; and, one
morning, he heard a curious sound, and he wondered what they were
doing, and he asked his mother.
"Mother," he said, "what are they doing? What are they? It sounds as
if they were pickaxing the dirt."
His mother laughed. "Well," she answered, "perhaps they are. I don't
know what they are doing. I think you'll have to go and see."
"Think I'll have to go and see," David repeated; "but I'll have my
breakfast first."
So he had his breakfast first, and he hurried a little because he
wanted to know what the noise was.
And when he was through his breakfast he took off his napkin and
slipped down from his chair and went around to kiss his mother.
His father had gone off to town in the early train.
"Good-bye," said David.
"Good-bye, dear," said his mother. "Be very careful."
He nodded. "Yes, I will." He was going out, but he stopped. "I don't
hear it now, mother. I don't hear the noise. Do you suppose they've
stopped doing it?"
"If you go right along over there, I think you'll find out about it."
So the little boy went out, and he picked up his shovel, but he
couldn't find his hoe.
And he put his shovel into his cart, and took up the handle of the
cart, and his cat came running, and he went toward the new house,
dragging his cart behind him with his shovel rattling in the bottom of
it. His cat ran on ahead.
Long before he got as far as the house, he saw some men's heads bob up
in the middle of the road; heads without any bodies to them.
And he went nearer, and he saw that the men were in a trench that they
had dug in the road, as far as the new house.
Some long iron pipes were in the gutter. The pipes were big enough for
his kitty to crawl through.
He wanted to ask somebody about them, but there was nobody there
except the two men in the trench, so he walked along until he came to
the mortar box.
The mortar man wasn't there. He had gone into the house with a hod of
mortar.
So David looked all about for somebody.
He saw the pile of sand with his hoe sticking out of it, but he didn't
pay any attention to it, for he wasn't thinking about hoes then.
And he saw the bones of the house almost all up, so that they made a
pretty good skeleton, and the carpenters were putting up the rafters:
the beams that hold up the roof.
And other carpenters had just begun nailing boards on to the outside
of the up-and-down beams, and there was a great noise of hammering.
At last he saw the foreman.
"Hello!" David called.
There was such a noise, with the carpenters all hammering, that the
foreman didn't hear him.
"Hello!" called David again, louder.
Still the foreman didn't hear.
"Hello!" David shouted as loud as he could shout. "_Hello, Jonathan!_"
The foreman heard, that time, and he looked around and laughed.
"Ho, Davie!" he said in a big round voice. "Just wait a minute and
I'll be down there."
So David waited a minute, then two, then five minutes, and the foreman
came. Then David asked his question.
"What are the men doing in the road?"
"They're digging a trench. When they get it done, they'll lay water
pipes in it. And the water will come all the way from the reservoir on
the hill, and it will go through pipes that are already laid under the
streets, and it will come to this street, and it will turn into this
street and go along, and some will go into your house, and some will
keep on to this house and go in through a pipe that will be under the
ground just the other side of the sand-pile.
"That pipe will go through the cellar wall, and to all the faucets in
the house, so that when the little boy who will live here wants to
wash his hands or take a bath, he will turn a faucet and the water
will come running. There, now."
"Oh," said David, "will a little boy live here?"
"I don't know who will live here, Davie," the foreman answered. "There
most generally is a little boy or so in any family that lives in this
town."
"Oh," said David; and he nodded his head, and he saw a faucet that was
nailed to a board.
And the faucet was on the end of a pipe which stuck up from the ground
near the mortar box.
"Why," he said, "there's a faucet, and water will come. I've seen the
mortar man get it there."
"Yes," said the foreman. "We had to have water to use. It comes
through this pipe that lies on top of the ground all the way to your
house. See?"
And the foreman showed David the pipe. It was hidden by the long grass.
"They're going to lay the pipes now, Davie. Do you want to see them do
it?"
So David put his little hand into the foreman's big one, and they went
together to where the men were.
The men had got up out of the trench, and they were going to take up
one of the iron pipes that lay in the gutter.
Just as they began to lift it, out of one end of it popped David's
kitty. She scurried around and popped into the end of another pipe,
and all the men laughed.
"Funny kitty," said David.
Then the men took hold of the pipe that the cat had been in at first,
and they lifted it, one at each end, and they carried it and put it
down beside the trench.
[Illustration: OUT POPPED DAVID'S KITTY]
Then they got into the trench again, and they took hold of the pipe
and lowered it to the bottom.
David couldn't see what the men were doing then, and he went to the
edge of the trench and squatted there and watched.
He saw the end of a pipe sticking out of the ground into the trench.
It looked as if it had been in the ground a long time.
"What is that?" he asked the foreman.
The foreman said it was the end of the old pipe, and there was a place
near his house where they could put a long iron thing into the ground,
down as far as the pipes, and turn it and let the water into this
pipe. The long iron thing was like a clock-key.
"And Davie," he said, "you see that one end of each pipe flares out
bigger than the other end. The men put the small end of one pipe into
the flaring end of the next. You'll see."
So David looked and the men fitted the small end of the new pipe into
the flaring end of the old one, and they blocked the new pipe up with
dirt and stones until it was just right.
Then one of the men took some things that were in the trench. All that
David saw was what looked like some old frazzled-out rope, and he laid
the things he had taken up around the new pipe in the joint, and he
hammered them in tight with a kind of a dull chisel. That was so that
the water shouldn't leak through.
When the men had the old frazzled-out rope all hammered in tight, the
other man came and brought him something that looked all snaky, and it
was shiny like the lead of a pencil, and it waved about as if it were
heavy and it seemed to be all moist like mud.
And the man took this snaky, wavy thing, and he wrapped it around the
pipe, and he drove it into the joint until it looked like a part of
the pipe.
Then he felt it all over carefully, and he stood up and looked at it.
And he made up his mind that it was all right, and the other man began
to shovel dirt down into the trench, and they punched the dirt until
it was all hard under the pipe and at the sides.
Then they went to the gutter and picked up another pipe.
The foreman couldn't wait any longer.
"I've got to go now, Davie."
"Where have you got to go?" David asked. "Can I go with you?"
"I've got to go into the house. I can't take you in there yet. I'm
afraid you'd get hurt. In a day or two you can go in."
David nodded. He was thinking about those pipes.
"Will the men keep on putting those pipes together until they come to
the house?" he asked. "And how will they get the pipe into the house?
They'll have to put it through a window."
"No," the foreman answered, "they won't have to put it through a
window. They'll lay the pipes straight past the house, and they'll
plug up the end until there are some more houses built on this road.
"Then they'll fit a little pipe into the side of the big pipe and run
it through a hole in the cellar wall.
"The little pipe is not much bigger than that pipe that the faucet is
on, over by the mortar box. What'll you do now, Davie?--play in the
sand?"
David nodded again. "Good-bye," he said.
"Good-bye." And the foreman went into the house.
And David dug in the sand for a while, and then he looked for his cat,
but he didn't see her; so he put his shovel and his hoe into the cart,
and walked off, dragging the cart, with the shovel and the hoe
rattling in the bottom of it.
And when he got to the pipes, the cat popped out of the end of one of
them, and she ran ahead of David, with her bushy tail sticking
straight up in the air, and David walked along to his house.
And that's all.
VI
THE SHINGLE AND CLAPBOARD STORY
Once upon a time there was a little boy, and he was almost five years
old, and his name was David. And there weren't any other children near
for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always
wore his overalls when he was playing.
One day he wandered up to the corner of the road that he lived on.
He wasn't allowed to go beyond that corner, and his mother didn't like
to have him go so far as the corner.
But he was pretending, and he didn't know how far he had come.
He played in the gravel of the gutter for a long time, and he was
talking nearly all the time.
His cat was there, taking little runs away, with her bushy tail
sticking straight up in the air. Then she would lie down on her back
and play with the air, and then she always jumped up in a great hurry
and ran back to David and rubbed against him.
But David wasn't talking to his cat, and he wasn't talking to himself.
He was talking to the pretend child who was his playmate and who had
come there holding to the other handle of his cart and helping him
drag it.
And he was so busy that he didn't notice the great wagon that was just
about to turn the corner.
The driver called to him.
"Hey, little boy! Don't get run over."
David scrambled up on the sidewalk before he even looked, for he
remembered to be careful.
Then he looked, and he saw a big wagon that was drawn by two horses,
and the wagon was loaded with short, shiny boards, tied together in
bundles, and on top of the bundles of short, shiny boards were bundles
of shingles, a great many of them.
David knew what shingles looked like when they came in bundles, but he
wondered what the shiny, short boards were.
But he didn't ask, because the horses were almost trotting, they were
walking so fast, and the driver seemed to be pretty busy.
He supposed that the shingles and things were going to the new house,
and he watched the wagon until it stopped there.
Then he took up the handle of his cart, and he walked off with it as
fast as he could walk, and then he began to run, and his shovel and
his hoe rattled so that you would have thought they would rattle out.
The pretend child didn't go with David, for he had forgotten all about
her.
Sometimes the child was a girl and sometimes it was a boy; but it was
a girl that morning. She was left in the gutter at the corner.
And David didn't call his cat, and the cat stayed at the corner for a
while, and first she looked at the pretend little girl and then she
looked after David, and she didn't know which to go with.
But at last she went running after David, and she caught up with him,
and she ran on ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the
air.
When David got to the house, he found the wagon there, and the horses
were standing still, and the driver was throwing off the bundles of
shingles and another man was piling them up.
They had got almost to the shiny, short boards.