were up there already.
And all the men waved their hands, and the horse started.
David stood and watched them until they turned the corner.
Then he picked up his shovel and his hoe and threw them into his cart,
and began to walk home, dragging his cart, with his shovel and his hoe
rattling in the bottom of it.
And his cat came running, and she ran ahead, with her bushy tail
sticking straight up in the air.
And that's all of this story.
XI
THE SETTING-OUT 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 morning he was playing in the thin woods behind his house.
He had his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he was walking slowly
along, kicking the dead leaves and looking up at the leaves on the
trees.
Not nearly all the leaves had fallen from the trees yet, but those
leaves that were still on the trees had turned to all kinds of pretty
colors: red and yellow and a great many pretty browns which looked
alive. And some leaves were red and yellow together, and some were
still green with red and yellow spots on them, and some leaves had not
changed their color at all, but were green all over.
And the squirrels were very busy hunting chestnuts and they didn't pay
much attention to David.
Suddenly there was a great scurrying, and every squirrel went racing
up the nearest tree, and David's cat came running, with her bushy tail
sticking straight up in the air, and she ran a little way ahead of
David, and she flopped over on her back in a little pile of leaves,
and she began playing with the leaves.
David laughed at her. "Funny kitty!" he said.
Then he turned and went on talking, but he wasn't talking to his cat
and he wasn't talking to himself.
His pretend playmate had come, and it was the boy, this time, and he
had brought the cat.
So David and that pretend little boy played together for a long time.
Sometimes they dragged the cart together, and sometimes they stopped
and hunted for chestnuts, and they put into the cart the chestnuts
that they found.
And after a while they came into that part of the woods which was
behind the new house.
And David heard some men talking together up at the new house, and he
looked and saw them squatting down beside the house, and two of the
men had shovels.
So David and the pretend little boy hurried to go to the new house, to
see what the men were doing, and they dragged the cart, and the shovel
and the hoe and the chestnuts all rattled about together in the bottom
of it; and the cat went running on ahead.
But, when David got there, the pretend little boy had gone, for David
had forgotten about him.
And David stopped a little way from the men, and looked about.
The grading men must have got their work all finished, for the ground
all about didn't look at all as it had when the foreman and David had
left it.
There weren't any signs of the rubbish, and the dirt was up higher on
the foundation in a nice straight line, and it sloped down to the
field all around, and it had been made all smooth.
David wondered about the great hole that was under the front steps,
and he went around there and looked, and the hole wasn't there any
more, but the ground came up to the steps, and a man was raking gravel
smooth, to make a front walk like the one that went into David's house.
David didn't say anything, and the man didn't say anything either, but
kept on raking.
So David went back to the place where the men were, with the shovels.
Those men were digging a round hole in the ground, about big enough
for David to sit in and stretch his legs out straight.
And when they had the hole dug, another man came, carrying a little
tree.
There were a whole pile of little trees out near the road, and they
all had their roots tied up in bagging, or a kind of coarse cloth.
The tree which the man was carrying was a little Christmas tree. He
had taken the cloth off of the roots, and he was cutting off, with his
knife, some of the ends of roots.
Then he put it in the hole, carefully, and the men spread the roots
out all around in the bottom of the hole, and they sifted some
dark-colored dirt all about them, and they worked it in between the
fine roots with their fingers, and they pressed it down hard.
The man who had put the tree in was holding on to it all the time, so
that it should grow up straight.
And when the roots were all right and the dirt was pressed down hard,
he let go of the tree and took up the end of a hose that was lying on
the ground, right behind him.
David hadn't noticed the hose before. It came from a shiny hose-faucet,
and the hose-faucet stuck out of the house just above the foundation,
halfway along the side.
The man let water run from the hose into the dirt that had just been
put around the roots of the tree, and he let it run for a long time.
And when the top of the hole was just a puddle of mud, he stopped the
water and dropped the hose, and the men scattered a little
dark-colored dirt that was dry over the top of it.
That dark-colored dirt is called loam, and it is the best kind of dirt
to make things grow.
David saw that from the house down to where the path would be to the
back door was already covered with the same dark-colored dirt.
The other side of the path was nice and smooth, but it looked sort of
raw and the dirt was a yellow color.
Just beside the road was a great pile of dark-colored dirt, and there
was a two-wheeled cart backed up to the pile, and a man was shoveling
the dirt into the cart.
When the cart was filled, the man tossed his shovel on top of the dirt
and started walking along.
"Come along, Jack," he said.
The horse had had his ears pricked forward, and when the man said that,
he started and followed the man to the end of the yellow dirt.
There he stopped, and the man took his shovel off the cart and threw
it on the ground. And he took the backboard out of the cart, and he
put his knee on the cart, and the top tipped back and slid all that
dirt out in a heap on the ground.
Then the horse walked along two steps, and the man took his shovel and
scraped out what was left in the cart, and he tipped the top of the
cart back again and he put the backboard in.
And he got up into the cart, and the horse turned around and walked
back to the pile to get another load.
David wanted to ask somebody some questions about the dirt, but he
didn't know any of the men, and they all seemed to be very busy.
So he just watched; and he saw another man come, and he had a shovel,
and he spread around the dirt in the heap that the cart had just
dumped until it was pretty even and smooth.
And the horse came, bringing another load, and that was dumped, and
the man spread that around with his shovel.
David went nearer, and the man saw him.
"Are you going to plant some little trees?" David asked.
"We're going to sow grass seed here," the man answered, "when this is
all covered with loam."
Then another load of loam came, and he was busy with his shovel, and
David went back to watch the other men plant trees.
They were planting more little Christmas trees near that first one,
five trees in a kind of a clump, and David watched them dig the holes
and put the trees in, and spread the roots about, and put dirt on them,
and stamp the dirt down hard, and put the water in.
And when the Christmas trees were all planted, they put another kind
at the back corner of the house.
Then they went to the front corner of the house, and one of them said
that there was the place for the lilac bushes.
And he got the lilac bushes and cut off a part of the roots while the
other men were digging the holes, and they planted the lilac bushes in
the holes, but they didn't do it so carefully as they had with the
other kinds of trees.
And when they had the holes filled up and the water turned off, and
the planting of lilac bushes all finished, they stopped and leaned on
their shovels and looked around, to see what else they had to do.
The loam was all over the yellow dirt, and the last load was just
being spread around.
So some of the men went to get the grass seed. That grass seed was in
green bags.
And they took up bags of grass seed and began walking slowly along
over the ground, and they took up handfuls of the grass seed and
scattered it in the air so that it fell evenly over the ground.
And they sowed the seed all among the trees they had just planted, and
all over the smooth dirt, and wherever they wanted the grass to grow;
but they didn't sow it in the paths.
Then two other men came, and they were dragging a great heavy stone
roller behind them.
It was so heavy that the two men had to walk very slowly, each
dragging it by one handle.
And they went to and fro over the ground where the grass seed had been
sown, and they rolled it down smooth and hard and shiny.
Before the roller men had got through, the others had gone and put on
their coats and gathered up their tools; and David knew that they were
through their work.
So he went where he had left his cart, and he looked for the pretend
little boy, but he had gone away, and David couldn't find him. And he
looked for his cat, and he couldn't see her either.
So he took up the handle of his cart, and he walked along to his house,
dragging his cart, with his shovel and his hoe and the chestnuts all
rattling together in the bottom of it.
And that's all.
XII
THE POLE-MEN 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 morning he had just started to wander along the road toward the
corner of the next street.
He wasn't allowed to go beyond that corner, but he could look and see
what was coming, and perhaps he could see the postman and the black
dog.
His cat was walking along beside him, looking up into his face, and he
was dragging his cart, with his shovel and his hoe rattling in the
bottom of it, for he might want to play in the sand of the gutter.
But before he got more than halfway to the corner, he heard a great
rattling and shouting, and two horses came around the corner.
They made a very wide turn, because they were dragging a wagon, and
behind that came two great logs which looked like trees, except that
they were all smoothed off.
And David wondered where the other ends of the logs were, for he
couldn't see anything but logs coming around the corner.
Then came a pair of strong wheels that the logs rested upon, and
presently there were the other ends of the logs, and David knew that
the logs were either telephone poles or electric light poles, for he
had seen a great many of both kinds.
There was a man driving, and two other men, and they had some other
smaller poles and some shovels in the wagon.
David stopped short, and his cat stopped, and they watched the wagon,
with the poles behind it, go slowly down the road until it had got a
little way beyond his house.
Then it stopped, and the men jumped out, and they began to look up in
the air.
David wondered why they were doing that. He wondered so much that he
walked along, with his cat walking beside him and his cart coming
after, to ask the men.
But before he got near enough to them to ask, they had stopped looking
up in the air, and they talked to each other, and David knew by what
they said that they had been looking to see where the telephone line
to his house stopped.
Then they started the horses, and the men walked beside them, and they
walked about as far as a big boy could throw a stone, and there they
stopped.
And the men undid the ropes from the long logs, and they rolled one of
them to one side and tipped it so that its big end was on the ground,
and they tied the ropes on to the other log again.
Then they got two of the smaller poles from the wagon, and they held
up the small end of the log with the small poles; and the wagon
started and the wheels went out from under the log and left it.
Then the men took away the small poles and the log fell upon the
ground, and it made a big booming noise as it fell.
The other log was unloaded in the same way not far from the corner of
the new house, and they led the horses to a tree and tied them; and
they took the shovels and all the little poles and the other things
out of the wagon.
The shovels were strange-looking things, with long, straight handles
and queer blades, more like long mustard-spoons than shovels; and the
little poles had sharp spikes in the ends, and some of the poles were
not much longer than clothes-poles, and some were a great deal longer;
and there were two sharp-pointed iron bars.
The men took all their things to the place where the first pole lay on
the ground, and two of them took bars and the other took one of the
shovels.
And the men with the bars stuck them into the ground and loosened the
dirt, and the other man scooped out the dirt with his big
mustard-spoon. Then some more dirt was loosened and that was scooped
out with the shovel.
The hole that they were digging was not much bigger around than the
end of the pole which would go into it.
The hole kept getting deeper, so that a common shovel wouldn't have
got up any dirt at all; but the man with the mustard-spoon shovel just
gave it a little twist, and lifted it out with dirt in it.
Pretty soon they had the hole dug deep enough.
It was so deep that, if a man could have stood on the bottom of it, he
could have just seen out, if he stood on his tiptoes.
But only a slim man could have got into the hole. A fat man would have
stuck fast as soon as his legs were in.
Then the men put down their bars and the shovel, and got the little
poles, and went where the long log lay.
And they rolled it over with bars which were something like tongs,
except that they had only one handle; and they rolled it until the big
end of the log was just over the hole.
Then they took the shortest small poles with spikes in the ends, and
they put them where they could reach them quickly.
And they all took hold of the end of the log and lifted it as high as
they could reach; and one of the men reached out quickly for his spike
pole, while the other two men held the log, and he jabbed the spike
hard into the log and held it while another man got his spike pole and
jabbed the spike hard into the log.
Then the third man jabbed the spike of his pole in, and they all
lifted together, and the butt end of the log slipped a little way into
the hole.
It couldn't go all the way to the bottom, because the big pole wasn't
up far enough yet, and the butt end struck the side of the hole.
Then they got longer spike poles, one man at a time, and they lifted
again, and the big pole slipped a little farther down into the hole.
And one of the men jabbed his spike pole in at another place, and then
the other men did, and they lifted again, and the big pole went
_thump!_ on the bottom of the hole.
And the men left their spike poles sticking in, all around, and jammed
the other ends into the ground to hold the big pole up straight while
they filled in the dirt around it.
David had been watching the men all the time, but he was careful not
to get near, because he had seen how the big pole bounced around when
it was unloaded.
His cat was not so careful, and she was almost hit by one of the spike
poles when the man threw it down, and she scampered home as fast as
she could go.
But David didn't pay any attention to her, and the men were too busy
to notice.
When the dirt was pounded hard around the pole, the men took up their
things, and walked along to the place where they had unloaded the
other pole; and David walked along, too, dragging his cart.
He would have liked to take some of the things in his cart, but they
were all too big, for he asked one of the men.
And the man looked at his cart, and he looked at David, and he laughed
and shook his head.
"But you be very careful not to get too near," he said. "If the pole
should get away from us, there's no knowing what it would do."
"Yes," said David. "I was careful."
"So you were," the man said. "You do the same way while we set this
pole."
So the men set the other pole, and David stood a long way off.
He stood so far off that he couldn't see very well, and when the men
had the pole straight up in the air, he wandered over to the wagon and
tried to see if anything else was in it.
The backboard was up and he couldn't see inside at all, but he saw the
wheels that the poles had come on, and he thought he would try to shin
up on them and look in.
So he put his arms around the axle and tried to get one leg over; but
as soon as he took his foot off the ground, the wheels began to go. He
put his foot down again and made the wheels go faster, hanging on to
the axle with his arms and paddling on the ground with his feet, for
the ground sloped a little.
And when the wheels had rolled gently down to the lowest part of the
road, they stopped and David couldn't make them go any more, even when
he pushed as hard as he could.
But the men had got through setting the pole, and they were going over
to the wagon when David rolled down the road and couldn't get back.
And they all went where he was, and one of them pushed on the axle,
and David pushed, and the wheels rolled back again to the wagon.
[Illustration: THE WHEELS BEGAN TO GO]
And the men let down the backboard, and they put in all their things:
all their poles and the bars and the shovel.
Then they took out a big coil of something that looked like rubber
tubing which was wound on a great wooden spool.
The spool was as big around as David's body, and the stuff that looked
like rubber tubing looked all twisty, as if there were two pieces
twisted together.
David wanted very much to know what it was. He didn't like to ask, but
the man who had it saw that he was looking at it very hard.
"Do you know what that is?" he asked, smiling at David.
David shook his head.
"Is it a little hose?"
"No, it's wire, and the wire is covered with that black rubbery stuff.
See, here are the ends."
He found the ends of the wire and showed them to David. There were two
bright ends of copper wire, and they peeped out of the black rubber
covering.
"There are two of them, you see, and they are twisted together."
David nodded, but he didn't say anything.
The other men were buckling on to their legs some iron spurs, or
climbers, just like those the tree men had.
And when they had their climbers buckled on, they took a little coil
of rope and some queer little wooden things and a big hammer, and they
went to the nearest pole.
One of the men walked right up this pole, and when he got nearly to
the top, he put a big strap around his waist and around the pole, and
buckled it, so that it held him to the pole, not tight up against it,
but loosely so that he could use his hands.
Then he took one of the wooden things that was sticking out of his
pocket, and he took his hammer from his belt, and he nailed the wooden
thing to the pole. And the coil of rope was hanging at his belt; and
he took it off, and he undid it, and let one end drop down to the
ground.
The man who was standing there tied on a big lump of glass, and the
man on the pole pulled it up, and untied it, and screwed it on the top
of the wooden pin that he had just nailed on. Then he dropped his rope
and came down the pole.
And he walked along until he came to the pole in front of David's
house, and he walked right up that pole.
[Illustration: HE WALKED RIGHT UP THAT POLE]
Then he let down one end of his rope, and the man on the ground tied
it to the end of the twisted wires, and the man on the pole pulled
them up, and the spool turned over and the wires unwound as the ends
went up the pole.
David couldn't see what the man on the pole did with the ends of the
wires, but he fastened them somehow to the wires that were there
already, and then he came down.
And the man on the ground put a short stick through the hole in the
middle of the spool, and he took hold of one end of the stick and the
man who had just come down from the pole took hold of the other end,
and they walked along, and the hanging wire began to get tight, and
the spool began to turn around as they walked, and the wire lay on the
ground behind them.
And they walked past the two new poles and to the corner of the new
house; and they put the spool down on the ground.
Almost all the wire had unwound from the spool.
The other man had been doing what had to be done at the second pole:
nailing on the wooden thing and putting the glass on.
Then he had taken a ladder to the corner of the house, and he had
fastened some things for the wire to go through, up the corner of the
house to the eaves.
Then he came down the ladder, and all the men walked back together.
The first man walked up his pole again and waited.
And the second man walked up his pole, and let down the end of the
rope.
And the man on the ground tied it to the wire, and the man on the pole
pulled it up, and the wire hung in the air between him and David's
house.
Then the man on the ground walked along to the next pole, and he tied
the man's rope to the wire and _he_ pulled it up.
And the man on the ground walked along to the corner of the new house,
and he took hold of the wire there, and went up the ladder with it,
and the wire was hanging in the air all the way from the new house to
David's house, but it rested on the two poles between.
Then the men all pulled the wire as tight as it ought to be, and they
fastened it to the poles and to the house, just the way it belonged,
and they made it go down the corner of the house, and they cut it off
at the bottom and left the ends sticking out.
Some other men would come and put wires inside the house, and those
other men would put the telephone in so that people could talk with
each other when they were far apart.
Then the pole men came down from their poles and the ladder, and they
gathered up all their things and put them into the wagon.
And they took off their climbers and put them into the wagon, and they
tied the wheels on behind, so that they would drag after the wagon.
And they untied the horses and they all got in, and they drove away,
with all their six wheels rattling, and they left David looking after
them.
But before they had got far one of the men turned and saw David
looking after them, and he saw his cat; and he waved his hand to David,
and he waved it to his cat.
Of course, the cat couldn't wave her hand, but David could, and he did,
and then the wagon turned the corner, and the wheels rattled after.
And David looked to see where his cart was, for he had forgotten it;
and he went to the cart, and took up the handle and walked slowly home.
And that's all.
XIII
THE MOVING-MEN 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.
They had been building a new house in the field next to David's house,
and it was all done, and all ready to be lived in.
It had electric lights and a range which would burn either coal or gas;
and in cold weather they would burn coal in the range, and in warm
weather they would use the gas part.
And the telephone was all in, for the inside-telephone-men had come
and put it in.
David hadn't seen them do their work, because they had been inside the
house all the time, and there wasn't any nice foreman, like Jonathan,
who knew him, and who took pains to show him everything there was to
show.
But he had seen them go in, carrying the telephone, and he had seen
them come out without it, and he had asked them if they had it all
fixed so that people could talk, and they had said that they had fixed
it, and that it was all right.
Then six great wagons had come. Three of the wagons brought furnace
coal and two of them brought range coal, and one brought a load of
wood to burn in the fireplaces.
And the furnace coal went in at one cellar window, and the range coal
went in at another cellar window, and the wood went in at the cellar
door, in a man's arms.
All these different things were being done at once, and there was a
tremendous racket with all the coal going down through iron chutes,
and all the men had been very busy.
Then the racket had stopped, and the men had taken their chutes and
thrown them into the wagons, and they had climbed up into their seats,
and they had rattled off, in a procession, but they had left the
cellar windows flapping.