One day, when my Grandfather Gifford was about seven years old, he
looked across the road to his father's blacksmith shop, and seeing
some one sitting on the bench by the door, went over to learn who it
was.
He found a little old man, with thick, bushy eyebrows and bright blue
eyes. His clothes were made all of leather, which creaked and rattled
when he moved. By his side was a partly open pack, in which
grandfather could see curious tools and sheets of shiny tin. By that
he knew that the man was the travelling tinker, who came once or twice
a year to mend leaky pans and pails, and of whom he had heard his
mother speak.
The old man was eating his luncheon--a slice or two of bread, a bit of
cold meat, and a cold potato; and because it seemed so poor a
luncheon, grandfather went back to the house and brought two big
apples from the cellar. The old man thanked him and ate the apples.
Then he got up, brushed the bread crumbs from his leather breeches,
and taking a little tin dipper from his pack, went down to the brook
for a drink of water. When he had had his fill, he came back to the
bench and sat down.
"Now, my boy," he said, "we will make a tree to grow here by the
brook. There ought to be one, for shade."
"Make a tree!" cried grandfather. "How can we make a tree? I thought
only God made trees."
"True," said the old man. "Only God makes trees, but sometimes we can
help Him."
With that, he took from the bench at his side a stick that he had cut
somewhere by the road, and had been using for a cane. It was slender
and straight, and grandfather noticed that the bark was smooth and of
a beautiful light green.
"Of this," said the old man, "we will make a tree in which the birds
of the air shall build their nests, and under which the beasts of the
field shall find shelter, and rest in the heat of the day. But first
there shall be music, to please the spirits of the springtime. Take
this stick down to the brook, and wet it all over."
So my grandfather took the stick and did as the old man told him. When
he came back to the bench, the tinker had a large horn-handled knife
open in his hand. With the blade, which seemed very sharp, he made a
single cut through the bark of the stick, about a foot from one end,
and by holding the knife still, and spinning the stick slowly toward
him in his fingers, he carried the cut all the way round. Then, near
the end, he cut a deep notch, and four or five smaller notches in a
line farther down; and after that he laid the stick across his knee,
and turning it all the while, began to pound it gently with the handle
of the knife.
When he had pounded a long time, he laid down the knife, and taking
the stick in both hands, gave it a little twist. At that, grandfather
heard something pop, and saw the bark slip from the end of the stick
above the knife-cut, all whole except for the notches, a smooth, green
tube.
Of the part of the stick from which he had slipped the bark, the old
man cut away more than half, and across the upper end he made a
smooth, slanting cut. Then he bade grandfather wet the stick again,
and when he had done it, he slipped the bark back to its place, and
put the end of the stick in his mouth and began to blow; and out of
the holes that he had cut, and which he stopped, one after another,
with his fingers, came what grandfather said was the sweetest music he
had ever heard--music like the voice of a bird singing a long way off,
or like that of a tiny bell.
As the old man played, he seemed to forget all about my grandfather;
but by and by he laid down the whistle, and smiled and said, "Come.
Now we will make the tree." And together the old man and the boy
walked down to the brook, and crossed over on some stepping stones, to
a place where the ground was soft and black and wet; and there, while
the boy held the stick straight, the old man pushed it far down into
the mud until it stood firm and true, with the whistle at the upper
end of it. And the old man took off his hat, and bowing to the stick,
seemed to my grandfather to make a speech to it.
"Little brother," he said, "we leave you here, where you will never be
hungry or thirsty. You have made your little music for us to-day, but
when you have grown tall and strong, One Who is greater than I shall
play upon you with the breath of His mighty winds; and when this
little boy is older than I am now,"--and here he put his hand on my
grandfather's head,--"his children's children shall hear your music
and be glad."
In a little while after that, the old man put on his pack and went
away; but my grandfather could not forget him, and almost every day he
looked at the stick by the brook. The whistle at the top began to
wither and dry up, and the loose bark cracked open and fell away,
until it seemed as if the whole stick must be dead; but one day my
grandfather saw that a tiny bud had appeared below where the whistle
had been; and the bud became a little sprout, and the sprout a shoot,
and other shoots followed, until the stick was indeed a little tree.
Through all the years that came after, it grew taller and stronger,
until "The Tinker's Willow" was known as the greatest tree in all the
countryside, and the birds did, indeed, build their nests among its
branches, and the cattle lay in its shade in the hot noontide.
Even when my grandfather was an old, old man, and had grown-up sons
and daughters, and many grandchildren, he loved to sit on the bench by
the shop and listen to the voice of the wind among the leaves of the
great tree; and then, if we asked him, he would tell us again of the
tinker who planted it, and of the music that came from the stick out
of which it grew.