THE CARPENTER’S LABORATORY.
The Natural History of the Pine-tree. -- How it is Converted into
Lumber, what it is Worth, and how it is Consumed. -- Where the
Students get Information. -- Working Drawings of the Lesson. -- Asking
Questions. -- The Instructor Executes the Lesson. -- Instruction in
the Use and Care of Tools. -- Twenty-four Boys Making Things. -- As
Busy as Bees. -- The Music of the Laboratory. -- The Self-reliance of
the Students.
Passing from the Drawing-Room down a flight of stairs we enter the
Carpenter’s Laboratory. Here we find twenty-four boys seated before a
black-board. At their left stands the instructor with a piece of white
pine in his hand. The piece of pine is the subject of his lecture. He
frequently breaks the thread of his remarks to ask questions, and he is
as frequently interrupted by questions from members of the class. The
scene closely resembles an animated discussion, of which a desire to
learn by asking questions is the chief characteristic. The discussion is
about pine-trees and pine lumber. A pale-faced, city-bred boy rises to
describe the pine-tree. He describes a fir-tree, such as may be seen in
well-kept urban grounds and parks, and describes it in well-chosen,
almost poetic phrase. The instructor shakes his head, but with a genial
smile, and recognizes a boy whose face is tanned brown, and who rises at
the nod and stands rather awkwardly as he speaks. He has seen the pine
in its native wilds, and he describes quite graphically its long, bare
trunk and slender limbs. But he says nothing of its narrow, linear
leaves, of a dark green color, nor of its woody cones, nor of the
Æolian-harp-like sound of the wind in its branches. Why, the instructor
wants to know, and he propounds a series of questions, the answers to
which afford a brief sketch of the boy’s history. His father is a dealer
in pine logs, and once this boy went with him into the pineries of
Northern Michigan in mid-winter, when the landscape was white with snow,
and there saw the huge trees sway back and forth under the woodman’s
axe, saw them topple over, and heard the loud crash of their fall, saw
them trimmed and sawed into mill-logs. He took no note of the woody
cones, nor of the narrow leaves of the pine, nor did the sound of the
wind in its branches make any impression upon his mind. He saw the pine
as his father saw it, with the eyes of a lumberman. He learned just one
thing, and learned it so well that he is able to tell the story of the
pine-tree from the moment of its fall from the stump in the great forest
to its arrival at the mill, and thence, cut into boards, planks, and
timber, to the raft or schooner bound for Chicago.
Then the different varieties of the pine-tree are enumerated, and the
uses to which their woods are severally adapted mentioned. The countries
which chiefly produce the pine-tree are named, and the climatic
conditions most favorable to its growth briefly referred to. This
discussion leads to the subject of commerce in pine lumber--quantity
consumed, demand and supply, etc; and this in turn brings a boy to his
feet with the statement that at the present rate of consumption the
supply of pine in North America will be exhausted in fifty years. In
answer to a question the boy says he read the statement in a newspaper.
This leads to further inquiry as to the sources of information sought by
the members of the class, whereupon it appears that fifteen boys have
consulted the title “pine” in some encyclopedia with a view to the
present lesson, and that eighteen boys have read the market report under
the title “lumber” in a daily journal, in order to learn the value of
white-pine boards. The value being stated by half a dozen boys, each
member of the class computes the cost of the piece of pine in the hands
of the teacher.
[Illustration: THE LABORATORY OF CARPENTRY.]
Ten minutes having been consumed in the inquiry into the nature and
value of the wood in which the lesson of the day is to be wrought, the
instructor makes working drawings of the lesson on the black-board. It
may consist of a plain joint, a mitre joint, a dove-tail joint, a tenon
and mortise, or a frame involving all these, and more manipulations. In
the few minutes devoted to this exercise any question that occurs to the
mind of the student may be asked, and no impatience is manifested or
felt if the questions are numerous and reiterated. But as a
matter-of-fact very few questions are asked during the black-board
exercise, because each student, having gone over every step of it in his
drawing-class the day previous, is perfectly familiar with the subject.
The instructor now quits the black-board for the bench, where, in the
presence of the whole class, he executes the difficult parts of the
lesson, still propounding and answering questions. If a new tool is
brought into requisition, instruction is given in its care and use. Now
the boys repair to their benches, throw off their coats, and seize their
tools. In a moment the silence and repose of the recitation-room are
exchanged for the noise and activity of the laboratory. A quarter of an
hour ago we left twenty-four boys, with bowed heads, making drawings of
things; for a quarter of an hour we have listened to a peculiar kind of
recitation involving much practical knowledge on the subject of the
pine-tree and its product, lumber; now we stand in the presence of
twenty-four boys, in twenty-four different attitudes of labor, making
things. They are literally as busy as bees, using the square, the saw,
the plane, and the chisel; they are, as the journeyman carpenter would
say, “getting out stuff for a job.” The coarse, buzzing sound of the
cross-cut saw resounds loudly through the room; above this bass note the
sharp tenor tone of the rip-saw is heard, and the rasping sound of half
a dozen planes throwing off a series of curling pine ribbons comes in as
a rude refrain. The faces of the boys are ruddy with the glow of
exercise; the pale-faced boy who mistook a fir-tree for a pine will have
his revenge on the angular boy from the Michigan pinery, for he is doing
a finer piece of work than the other.
[Illustration: COURSE IN THE LABORATORY OF CARPENTRY.]
In the midst of the harmonious confusion caused by the use of saws,
planes, mallets, and chisels, the instructor raps on his desk, and
silence is restored; three or four boys stand in a group about the
instructor’s desk, the others pause and wipe the perspiration from their
brows. It is a picture full of interest--twenty-four boys, with flushed,
eager faces, lifting their eyes simultaneously to the face of the
instructor, waiting for the hint which is to come, and which is sure in
these now active minds to result in a prompt solution of the main
problem of the day’s lesson. A similar question from several boys shows
the instructor that the lesson has not been made clear; hence the
general explanation which follows the call to order. So the work goes
on, with now and then an interruption. There is a student trying to fit
a tenon into its mortise; he is nervous and impatient; the instructor
observes him, foresees a catastrophe, and moves towards his bench. But
it is too late! The tenon being forced the mortise splits, and the
discomforted student makes a wry face. The instructor approaches with a
word of good cheer, but with the warning aphorism that “haste makes
waste.” The student’s face flushes, and he chronicles his failure as
Huntsman, the inventor of cast-steel, did his, by burying the wreck
under a pile of shavings, and commencing, as the lawyers say, _de novo_.
Thus the lesson proceeds “by the usual laboratory methods employed in
teaching the sciences;” the class learns the thing to be done by
doing it. The students are at their best, because the lesson to be
learned compels a close union between the three great powers of
man--observation, reflection, and action. No student seeks aid from
another, because such a course would be impossible without the knowledge
of the whole class. A feeling of self-reliance is thus developed, the
disposition to shirk repressed, and a sense of sturdy independence
encouraged and promoted.