SOME years ago, while reading Lockhart’s _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, I
came across a passage, in the autobiographical part, which struck me as
so suggestive that I copied it; and here I copy it again, after which I
will say my little say on the subject (it was when he was a youth, you
know):
Wherever I went, I cut a piece of a branch from a tree—these
constituted what I called my log-book; and I intended to have a
set of chessmen out of them, each having reference to the place
where it was cut—as the kings from Falkland and Holy Rood; the
queens from Queen Mary’s yew-tree at Crookston; the bishops
from abbeys or Episcopal palaces; the knights from baronial
residences; the rooks from royal fortresses; and the pawns
generally from places worthy of historical note.
Do you suppose he ever did it?
Now I had had the “collecting craze” for years, just as most boys and
girls have now; and wherever I had been, had secured something, till
a most miscellaneous accumulation was packed away in boxes and drawers
about the house. Moreover, the rest of the children, as they grew up,
had been possessed with the same idea. The boy who went South had
obtained specimens of different kinds of woods; the one who was in the
army had picked up relics; the girl who went to the White Mountains,
and afterwards to Ticonderoga, had gathered mosses, leaves, and wild
flowers.
Besides, all of us who had a duplicate or a bit to spare, had exchanged
with some of our friends, just as you are all doing. The thing is in
the air. Boys are boys, and girls are girls, everywhere; and fashions
repeat themselves, and are passed on. You are doing what we did before
you; and by and by, others will do as you are doing.
The result was that we had a little of everything, and a great deal, a
very great deal all told; and when spring house-cleaning came around,
and as in all proper households, every closet and drawer, bag and
bundle was turned inside out, our mother would say: “Why don’t you make
something out of these things? Seems to me if I couldn’t, I’d give
them to somebody who would.”
There was the trouble—we meant to; forever meaning to do something;
but that class, whether old or young, does not usually accomplish much.
But let me tell you of things that _have_ been done—by whom it does
not matter. One boy started up on Sir Walter’s plan, and set the
example for his comrades (besides correspondents); so that presently
hand-books on chess made their appearance in the neighborhood; and
there began to be a great deal of turning on lathes, and fine sawing,
and whittling, and sand-papering. Pretty soon chess was all the talk;
and as that game is one which requires in Wordsworth’s line (written on
an altogether different subject)
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill,
(the strength being strength of purpose) also a good head for planning,
and a memory, it turned out that the chessmen fancy proved a good
thing. Nothing outside of good, hard, school studies can better
discipline some of the faculties than that game. It is indeed no light
accomplishment to play even tolerably well. Besides, when those boys
were absorbed in chess, their fathers and mothers did not have to worry
about them when they were away in the evening.
One set had historic associations almost the next best thing to Sir
Walter’s. Think of the king being made of a piece of wood from Mount
Vernon; a castle (or rook) of a piece from Fort Ticonderoga (we have
forts, or ruins of forts, enough); a knight from a piece of John
Brown’s scaffold; and the pawns from a peach-tree that grew from a
stone a soldier had thrown away on a Virginia battlefield.
Chessmen can be made from specimens of wood of our native trees; solid
oak for king or castle, delicate poplar or birch for the queen, and so
on; or of any curious and rare woods; and almost all have some beauty
of grain or markings. They can be turned on a lathe, and then finished
in grooves and otherwise, or wholly done with the knife. Many, as you
know, are in two pieces; and the king and queen in some sets can be
taken apart in two places, making three.
There are great opportunities in pieces of wood. The boy who went to
the war brought home enough of Southern woods for several canes; and
for convenience in packing, he cut it in sections about six inches
long; purposing to fit them together on the same principle that a cap
of rubber is fitted to the end of a pencil; by cutting away on one
piece to slip into a hole made in the next, plug fashion, and there
glued.
Relics in wood can be worked into a glove box or handkerchief box,
skilfully joining the parts and as skilfully gluing them. Picture
frames suggest another form. There is one here made by a clerk in a
store while waiting for customers. It has over three hundred small
strips, lapping in a fanciful way, and not a tack, or a brad is used in
the work; but this is too complicated.
It is easier to turn out checker-men or napkin-rings, or make
pen-holders, or paper-knives. Very elegant paper-knives can be
fashioned, having one kind for the blade and two for the handle. But
all this woodwork must be done with great care, accuracy and nicety,
not only in the cutting and dovetailing or matching of the parts, but
in the gluing and finishing off, including a delicate oiling to bring
out the grain. It is nice work; to be sure it is. But if soldiers in
prisons can do such things as some of our soldiers did, with not much
besides a jack-knife to do with, pray cannot a smart Western or Eastern
boy do as much?—between scroll saws and the variety of choice tools
within his reach, he is not the boy I take him for if he cannot make
himself a set of chessmen, or a work-box for his sister.
As for minerals, I lately saw at a State Fair a box on which broken-up
specimens from that State were glued, crusting it all over with stone
that sparkled in places like crystal. On each specimen was a mere speck
of paper with a number on it, which corresponded to a number on a
written list placed inside, telling what they were—beryl, tourmaline,
quartz, etc., etc., and I thought it an admirable thing.
In a parlor, arranged in a border around the little iron fence in front
of the coal grate I once saw a curious display of cobble-stones brought
home from different beaches. The lady who put them there was artistic,
and the effect was pretty. Sea-shells of delicate varieties can be used
as necklaces or bracelets if pierced with a red-hot darning needle,
or in some way bored to admit of being strung; some of those lovely,
iridescent, foreign shells, strung in such a way, are greatly to be
desired. You can think of so many ways to put them to pretty use!
Mosses and lichens you can group on card-board or glue them to a wooden
cross. With leaves and pressed flowers you can do no end of things. You
can mount them on card-board, or make a wreath of them around a piece
of wire or rattan; or ornament a fan with them—a round, Japanese fan,
recovering it with silk or paper of a neutral color, for background.
One girl made a transparency with three or four bright autumn leaves
(from a woodbine), which were gathered from among some that had fallen
at Longfellow’s gate—just where the poet’s feet had passed in and
out hundreds of times. She cut two pieces of coarse lace to fit the
window-pane, glued her cluster of leaves in the centre between them,
then overcast the outer edges and put on a deep binding of crimson
velvet. As the light streamed through they were gorgeous as old stained
glass.
If you collect relics, souvenirs, momentos, curiosities, they are
worth arranging. If you get tired of them, give them to somebody else.
All these articles require much painstaking. They will be spoiled for
any person of good taste if they are daubed, out of proportion, or
awry. Don’t let them have a home-made look either. They need not. No
reason why a boy of average skill should not do as well, after some
experience, as those sailors in the light-ships; or why a girl should
not, with care and all her trying, make as pretty things as the gypsy
women or the nuns, of whom people like so well to buy.