The
Little City of Hope
A CHRISTMAS STORY
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1907
_Copyright in the United States America, 1907_
CONTENTS
PAGE
1. HOW JOHN HENRY OVERHOLT SAT ON PANDORA'S BOX 1
2. HOW A MAN AND A BOY FOUNDED THE LITTLE CITY OF HOPE 19
3. HOW THEY MADE BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW 35
4. HOW THERE WAS A FAMINE IN THE CITY 49
5. HOW THE CITY WAS BESIEGED AND THE LID OF PANDORA'S BOX CAME OFF 63
6. HOW A SMALL BOY DID A BIG THING AND NAILED DOWN THE LID OF THE BOX 74
7. HOW A LITTLE WOMAN DID A GREAT DEED TO SAVE THE CITY 87
8. HOW THE WHEELS WENT ROUND AT LAST 105
9. HOW THE KING OF HEARTS MADE A FEAST IN THE CITY OF HOPE 116
I
HOW JOHN HENRY OVERHOLT SAT ON PANDORA'S BOX
"Hope is very cheap. There's always plenty of it about."
"Fortunately for poor men. Good morning."
With this mild retort and civil salutation John Henry Overholt rose and
went towards the door, quite forgetting to shake hands with Mr.
Burnside, though the latter made a motion to do so. Mr. Burnside always
gave his hand in a friendly way, even when he had flatly refused to do
what people had asked of him. It was cheap; so he gave it.
But he was not pleased when they did not take it, for whatever he chose
to give seemed of some value to him as soon as it was offered; even his
hand. Therefore, when his visitor forgot to take it, out of pure absence
of mind, he was offended, and spoke to him sharply before he had time to
leave the private office.
"You need not go away like that, Mr. Overholt, without shaking hands."
The visitor stopped and turned back at once. He was thin and rather
shabbily dressed. I know many poor men who are fat, and some who dress
very well; but this was not that kind of poor man.
"Excuse me," he said mildly. "I didn't mean to be rude. I quite forgot."
He came back, and Mr. Burnside shook hands with becoming coldness, as
having just given a lesson in manners. He was not a bad man, nor a
miser, nor a Scrooge, but he was a great stickler for manners,
especially with people who had nothing to give him. Besides, he had
already lent Overholt money; or, to put it nicely, he had invested a
little in his invention, and he did not see any reason why he should
invest any more until it succeeded. Overholt called it selling shares,
but Mr. Burnside called it borrowing money. Overholt was sure that if he
could raise more funds, not much more, he could make a success of the
"Air-Motor"; Mr. Burnside was equally sure that nothing would ever come
of it. They had been explaining their respective points of view to each
other, and in sheer absence of mind Overholt had forgotten to shake
hands.
Mr. Burnside had no head for mechanics, but Overholt had already made an
invention which was considered very successful, though he had got little
or nothing for it. The mechanic who had helped him in its construction
had stolen his principal idea before the device was patented, and had
taken out a patent for a cheap little article which every one at once
used, and which made a fortune for him. Overholt's instrument took its
place in every laboratory in the world; but the mechanic's labour-saving
utensil took its place in every house. It was on the strength of the
valuable tool of science that Mr. Burnside had invested two thousand
dollars in the Air-Motor without really having the smallest idea whether
it was to be a machine that would move the air, or was to be moved by
it. A number of business men had done the same thing.
Then, at a political dinner in a club, three of the investors had dined
at the same small table, and in an interval between the dull speeches,
one of the three told the others that he had looked into the invention
and that there was nothing in Overholt's motor after all. Overholt was
crazy.
"It's like this," he had said. "You know how a low-pressure engine acts;
the steam does a part of the work and the weight of the atmosphere does
the rest. Now this man Overholt thinks he can make the atmosphere do
both parts of the work with no steam at all, and as that's absurd, of
course, he won't get any more of my money. It's like getting into a
basket and trying to lift yourself up by the handles."
Each of the two hearers repeated this simple demonstration to at least a
dozen acquaintances, who repeated it to dozens of others; and after that
John Henry Overholt could not raise another dollar to complete the
Air-Motor.
Mr. Burnside's refusal had been definite and final, and he had been the
last to whom the investor had applied, merely because he was undoubtedly
the most close-fisted man of business of all who had invested in the
invention.
Overholt saw failure before him at the very moment of success, with the
not quite indifferent accompaniment of starvation. Many a man as good as
he has been in the same straits, even more than once in life, and has
succeeded after all, and Overholt knew this quite well, and therefore
did not break down, nor despair, nor even show distinct outward signs of
mental distress.
Metaphorically, he took Pandora's box to the Park, put it in a sunny
corner, and sat upon it, to keep the lid down, with Hope inside, while
he thought over the situation.
It was not at all a pleasant one. It is one thing to have no money to
spare, but it is quite another to have none at all, and he was not far
from that. He had some small possessions, but those with which he was
willing to part were worth nothing, and those which would bring a little
money were the expensive tools and valuable materials with which he was
working. For he worked alone, profiting by his experience with the
mechanic who had robbed him of one of his most profitable patents. When
the idea of the Air-Motor had occurred to him he had gone into a
machine-shop and had spent nearly two years in learning the use of fine
tools. Then he had bought what he needed out of the money invested in
his idea, and had gone to work himself, sending models of such castings
as he required to different parts of the United States, that the pieces
might be made independently.
He was not an accomplished workman, and he made slow progress with only
his little son to help him when the boy was not at school. Often,
through lack of skill, he wasted good material, and more than once he
spoiled an expensive casting, and was obliged to wait till it could be
made again and sent to him. Besides, he and the boy had to live, and
living is dear nowadays, even in a cottage in an out-of-the-way corner
of Connecticut; and he needed fire and light in abundance for his work,
besides something to eat and decent clothes to wear and somebody to cook
the dinner; and when he took out his diary note-book and examined the
figures on the page near the end, headed "Cash Account, November," he
made out that he had three hundred and eighteen dollars and twelve
cents to his credit, and nothing to come after that, and he knew that
the men who had believed in him had invested, amongst them, ten thousand
dollars in shares, and had paid him the money in cash in the course of
the past three years, but would invest no more; and it was all gone.
One thousand more, clear of living expenses, would do it. He was
positively sure that it would be enough, and he and the boy could live
on his little cash balance, by great economy, for four months, at the
end of which time the Air-Motor would be perfected. But without the
thousand the end of the four months would be the end of everything that
was worth while in life. After that he would have to go back to teaching
in order to live, and the invention would be lost, for the work needed
all his time and thought.
He was a mathematician, and a very good one, besides being otherwise a
man of cultivated mind and wide reading. Unfortunately for himself, or
the contrary, if the invention ever succeeded, he had given himself up
to higher mathematics when a young man, instead of turning his talent to
account in an architect's office, a shipbuilding yard, or a locomotive
shop. He could find the strain at any part of an iron frame building by
the differential and integral calculus to the millionth of an ounce, but
the everyday technical routine work with volumes of ready-made tables
was unfamiliar and uncongenial to him; he would rather have calculated
the tables themselves. The true science of mathematics is the most
imaginative and creative of all sciences, but the mere application of
mathematics to figures for the construction of engines, ships, or
buildings is the dullest sort of drudgery.
Rather than that, he had chosen to teach what he knew and to dream of
great problems at his leisure when teaching was over for the day or for
the term. He had taught in a small college, and had known the rare
delight of having one or two pupils who were really interested. It had
been a good position, and he had married a clever New England girl, the
daughter of his predecessor, who had died suddenly. They had been very
happy together for years, and one boy had been born to them, whom his
father insisted on christening Newton. Then Overholt had thrown up his
employment for the sake of getting freedom to perfect his invention,
though much against his wife's advice, for she was a prudent little
woman, besides being clever, and she thought of the future of the two
beings she loved, and of her own, while her husband dreamed of hastening
the progress of science.
Overholt came to New York because he could work better there than
elsewhere, and could get better tools made, and could obtain more easily
the materials he wanted. For a time everything went well enough, but
when the investors began to lose faith in him things went very badly.
Then Mrs. Overholt told her husband that two could live where three
could not, especially when one was a boy of twelve; and as she would not
break his heart by teasing him into giving up the invention as a matter
of duty, she told him that she would support herself until it was
perfected or until he abandoned it of his own accord. She was very well
fitted to be a governess; she was thirty years old and as strong as a
pony, she said, and she had friends in New England who could find her a
situation. He should see her whenever it was possible, she added, but
there was no other way.
Now it is not easy to find a thoroughly respectable married governess
of unexceptionably good manners, who comes of a good stock and is able
to teach young ladies. Such a person is a treasure to rich people who
need somebody to take charge of their girls while they fly round and
round the world in automobiles, seeking whom they may destroy. Therefore
Mrs. Overholt obtained a very good place before long, and when the
family in which she taught had its next attack of European fever and it
was decided that the girls must stay in Munich to improve their German
and their music, Mrs. Overholt was offered an increase of salary if she
would take them there and see to it, while their parents quartered
Germany, France, Spain, and Austria at the rate of forty miles an hour,
or even fifty and sixty where the roads were good. If the parents broke
their necks, Mrs. Overholt would take the children home; but this was
rather in the understanding than in the agreement.
Such was the position when John Henry sat down upon the lid of Pandora's
box in a sunny corner of the Central Park and reflected on Mr.
Burnside's remark that "there was plenty of hope about." The inventor
thought that there was not much, but such as it was, he did not mean to
part with it on the ground that the man of business had called it
"cheap."
He resolved his feelings into factors and simplified the form of each;
and this little mathematical operation showed that he was miserable for
three reasons.
The first was that there was no money for the tangent balance of the
Air-Motor, which was the final part, on which he had spent months of
hard work and a hundred more than half sleepless nights.
The second was that he had not seen his wife for nearly a year, and had
no idea how long it would be before he saw her again, and he was just as
much in love with her as he had been fourteen years ago, when he married
her.
The third, and not the least, was that Christmas was coming, and he did
not see how in the world he was to make a Christmas out of nothing for
Newton, seeing that a thirteen-year-old boy wants everything under the
sun to cheer him up when he has no brothers and sisters, and school is
closed for the holidays, and his mother is away from home, and there is
nobody but a dear old tiresome father who has his nose over a lathe all
day long unless he is blinding himself with calculating quaternions for
some reason that no lad, and very few men, can possibly understand. John
Henry was obliged to confess that hope was not much of a Christmas
present for a boy in Newton's surroundings.
For the surroundings would be dismal in the extreme. A rickety cottage
on an abandoned Connecticut farm that is waiting for a Bohemian emigrant
to make it pay is not a gay place, especially when two-thirds of the
house has been turned into a workshop that smells everlastingly of
smith's coal, brass filings, and a nauseous chemical which seemed to be
necessary to the life of the Air-Motor, and when the rest of the house
is furnished in a style that would make a condemned cell look attractive
by contrast.
Besides, it would rain or snow, and it rarely snowed in a decent
Christian manner by Christmas. It snowed slush, as Newton expressed it.
A certain kind of snow-slush makes nice hard snowballs, it is true, just
like stones, but when there is no other boy to fight, it is no good.
Overholt had once offered to have a game of snow-balling with his son on
a Saturday afternoon in winter; and the invitation was accepted with
alacrity. But it was never extended again. The boy was a perfect terror
at that form of diversion. Yet so distressed was Overholt at the
prospect of a sad Christmas for his son that he even thought of
voluntarily giving up his thin body to the torment again on the 25th of
December, if that would amuse Newton and make it seem less dull for him.
Good-will towards men, and even towards children, could go no further
than that, even at Christmas time. At least Overholt could think of no
greater sacrifice that might serve.
For what are toys to a boy of thirteen? He wants a gun and something to
kill, or he wants a boat in which he can really sail, or a live pony
with a real head, a real tail, and four real legs, one at each corner.
That had been Newton's definition of the desired animal when he was six
years old, and some one had given him a wooden one on rockers with the
legs painted on each side. Girls of thirteen can still play with dolls,
and John Henry had read that, far away in ancient times, girls
dedicated their dolls, with all the dolls' clothes, to Artemis on the
eve of their wedding-day. But no self-respecting boy of thirteen cares a
straw for anything that is not real, except an imaginary pain that will
keep him away from school without cutting down his rations; and in the
invention and presentation of such fictitious suffering he beats all the
doll-makers in Germany and all the playwrights and actors in the world.
You must have noticed that the pain is always as far from the stomach as
is compatible with probability. Toothache is a grand thing, for nobody
can blame a healthy boy for eating then, if he can only bear the pain.
And he can, and does, bear it nobly, though with awful faces. The little
beast knows that all toothaches do not make your cheek swell. Then there
is earache; that is a splendid invention; it goes through your head like
a red-hot corkscrew with a powerful brakeman at the other end, turning
it steadily--between meals. Only certain kinds of things really serve to
make him stop. Ice-cream is one, and it takes a great deal of it. It is
well known that ice will cool a red-hot corkscrew.
But this is a digression, for no boy ever has any pain at Christmas; it
is only afterwards that it comes on; usually about ten days.
After an hour Overholt came to the conclusion that he had better take
Pandora's box out to the cottage and sit on it there, since nothing
suggested itself to him, in spite of his immense good-will to accept any
suggestion which the spirit of coming Christmas might be kind enough to
offer; and if he could do nothing else, he could at least work at his
machine, and try to devise some means of constructing the
tangent-balance, with the materials he had left, and perhaps, by the
time he was thoroughly grimy and the workshop smelt like the Biblical
bottomless pit, something would occur to him for Newton.
He could also write a letter to his wife, a sort of anticipatory
Christmas letter, and send her the book he had bought as a little gift,
wrapping it in nice white paper first, tied with a bit of pale green
ribband which she had left behind her, and which he had cherished nearly
a year, and marking it "to be opened on Christmas morning"; and the
parcel should then be done up securely in good brown grocer's paper and
addressed to her, and even registered, so that it could not possibly be
lost. It was a pretty book, and also a very excellent book, which he
knew she wanted and would read often, so it was as well to take
precautions. He wished that Newton wanted a book, or even two or three,
or magazines with gaily coloured pictures, or anything that older or
younger boys would have liked a little. But Newton was at that age which
comes sooner or later to every healthy boy, and the sight of a book
which he was meant to read and ought to read was infinitely worse than
the ugliest old toad that ever flops out of a hollow tree at dusk,
spitting poison and blinking his devilish little eyes at you when you
come too near him.
Overholt had been brought up by people who lived in peace and good-will
towards men, in a city where the spirit of Christmas still dwells, and
sleeps most of the time, but wakens every year, like a giant of good
courage and good cheer, at the sound of the merry bells across the snow,
and to the sweet carol under the windows in the frosty night. The
Germans say that bad men have no songs; and we and all good fellows may
say that bad people have no Christmas, and though they copy the letter
they know not the spirit; and I say that a copied Christmas is no
Christmas at all, because Christmas is a feast of hearts and not of poor
bits of cut-down trees stuck up in sawdust and covered with lights and
tinsel, even if they are hung with the most expensive gewgaws and
gimcracks that ever are bought for gifts by people who are expected to
give, whether they like or not. But when the heart for Christmas is
there and is beating, then a very little tree will do, if there be none
better to the hand.
Overholt thought so, while the train rumbled, creaked, and clattered and
jerked itself along, as only local trains can, probably because they are
old and rheumatic and stiff and weak in the joints, like superannuated
crocodiles, though they may have once been young express trains, sleek
and shiny, and quick and noiseless as bright snakes.
Overholt thought so, too; but the trouble was that he saw not even the
least little mite of a tree in sight for his boy when the 25th of
December should come. And it was coming, and was only a month away; and
time is not a local train that stops at every station, and then kicks
itself on a bit to stop at the next; it is the "Fast Limited," and, what
is more, it is the only one we can go by; and we cannot get out, because
it never stops anywhere.
II
HOW A MAN AND A BOY FOUNDED THE LITTLE CITY OF HOPE
Overholt's boy came home from school at the usual hour with his books
buckled together in an old skate strap, which had never been very good
because the leather was too soft and tore from one hole to the next; but
it served very well for the books, as no great strain was caused by an
arithmetic thumbed to mushiness, a history in the same state, and a
geography of which the binding gave in and doubled up from sheer
weariness, while the edges were so worn that the eastern coast of China
and Siberia had quite disappeared.
He was a good-looking lad, not tall for his age, but as tough as a
street cat in hard training. He had short and thick brown hair, a clear
complexion, his father's energetically intellectual features, though
only half developed yet, a boldly-set mouth, and his mother's kindly,
practical blue eyes. For surely the eyes of practical people are always
quite different from those of all others; and not many people are
practical, though I never knew anybody who did not think he or she was,
except pinchbeck artists, writers, and players, who are sure that since
they must be geniuses, it is necessary to be Bohemians in order to show
it. The really big ones are always trying to be practical, like Sir
Isaac Newton when he ordered a good-sized hole to be cut in his barn
door for the cat, and a little one next it for the kitten.
But Newton Overholt did not at all resemble his great namesake. He was a
practical young soul, and had not yet developed the American disease
which consists in thinking of two things at the same time. John Henry
had it badly, for he had been thinking of the tangent-balance, his wife,
his boy, and the coming Christmas, all together, since he had got home,
and the three problems had got mixed and had made his head ache.
Nevertheless he looked up from his work-table and smiled when his son
came in.
"Everything all right?" he asked, with an attempt to be cheerful.
"Oh yes, fine," answered the boy, looking at the motionless model for
the five-hundredth time, and sticking his hands into his pockets. "I'm
only third in mathematics yet, but I'm head in everything else. I wish I
had your brains, father! I'd be at the head of the arithmetic class in
half a shake of a lamb's tail if I had your brains."
So far as mathematics were concerned this sounded probable to John
Henry, who would have considered the speed of the tail to be a variable
function of lamb, depending on the value of mother, plus or minus milk.
"Well," he said in an encouraging tone, "I never could remember
geography, so it makes us even."
"I'd like to know how!" cried the boy in a tone of protest. "You could
do sums, and you grew up to be a great mathematician and inventor. But
what is the good of a geographician, anyway? They can only make
school-books. They never invent anything, do they? You can't invent
geography, can you? At least you can, and some boys do, but they go to
the bottom of the class like lead. It's safer to invent history than
geography, isn't it, father?"
Overholt's clever mouth twitched.
"It's much safer, my boy. Almost all historians have found it so."
"There! I said so to-day, and now you say just the same thing. I don't
believe one word of ancient history. Not--one--word! They wrote it about
their own nations, didn't they? All right. Then you might just as well
expect them to tell what really happened, as think that I'd tell on
another boy in my own school. I must say it would be as mean as dog pie
of them if they did, but all the same that does not make history true,
does it?"
Newton had a practical mind. His father, who had not, meditated with
unnecessary gravity on the boy's point of view and said nothing.
"For instance," continued the lad, sitting down on the high stool before
the lathe Overholt was not using, "the charge of Balaclava's a true
story, because it's been told by both sides; but they all say that it
did no good, anyway, except to make poetry of. But Marathon! Nobody had
a chance to say a word about it except the Greeks themselves, and they
weren't going to allow that the Persians wiped up the floor with them,
were they? Why should they? And if Balaclava had happened then, those
Greek fellows would have told us that the Light Brigade carried the
Russian guns back with them across their saddles, wouldn't they? I say,
father!"
"What is it?" asked Overholt, looking up, for he had gone back to his
work and was absorbed in it.
"The boys are all beginning to talk about Christmas down at the school.
Now what are we going to do at Christmas? I've been wondering."
"So have I!" responded the man, laying down the screw-plate with which
he was about to cut a fine thread on the end of a small brass rod for
the tangent-balance. "I've been thinking about it a good deal to-day,
and I haven't decided on anything."
"Let's have turkey and cranberry sauce, anyway," said Newton
thoughtfully, for he had a practical mind. "And I suppose we can have
ice-cream if it freezes and we can get some ice. Snow does pretty well
if you pack it down tight enough with salt, and go on putting in more
when it melts. Barbara doesn't make ice-cream as well as they do in New
York. She puts in a lot of winter-green and too little cocoanut. But
it's not so bad. We can have it, can't we, father?"
"Oh yes. Turkey, cranberry sauce, and ice-cream. But that isn't a whole
Christmas!"
"I don't see what else you want, I'm sure," answered the boy
thoughtfully. "I mean if it's a big turkey and there's enough
ice-cream--cream-cakes, maybe. You get good cream-cakes at Bangs's, two
for five cents. They're not very big, but they're all right inside--all
gooey, you know. Can you think of anything else?"
"Not to eat!"
"Oh, well then, what's the matter with our Christmas? I can't see. No
school and heaps of good gobbles."
"Good what?" Overholt looked at the boy with an inquiring glance, and
then understood. "I see! Is that the proper word?"
"When there's lots, it is," answered Newton with conviction. "Of course,
there are all sorts of things I'd like to have, but it's no good
wishing you could lay Columbus's egg and hatch the American eagle, is
it?[Footnote: The writer acknowledges his indebtedness for this fact in
natural and national history to his aunt, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, to whom
it was recently revealed in the course of making an excellent speech.]
What would you like, father, if you could choose?"
"Three things," answered Overholt promptly. "I should like to see that
wheel going round, softly and steadily, all Christmas Day. I should like
to see that door open and your mother coming in."
"You bet I would too!" cried Newton, dropping from bold metaphor to
vulgar vernacular. "Well, what's the third thing? You said there were
three."
"I should like you to have a real, old-fashioned, glorious Christmas, my
boy, such as you had when you were smaller, before we left the house
where you were born."
"Oh well, you mustn't worry about me, father; if there's plenty of
turkey and ice-cream and the cream-cakes, I can stand it. Mother can't
come, anyhow, so that's settled, and it's no use to think about it. But
the motor--that's different. There's hope, anyway. The wheel may go
round. If you didn't hope so, you wouldn't go on fussing over it, would
you? You'd go and do something else. They always say hope's better than
nothing."
"It's about all we shall have left for Christmas, so we may as well
build as much on it as we can."
"I love building," said Newton. "I like to stand and watch a bricklayer
just putting one brick on another and making the wall grow."
"Perhaps you'll turn out an architect."
"I'd like to. I never showed you my city, did I?" He knew very well that
he had not, and his father looked at him inquiringly. "No. Oh well, you
won't care to see it."
"Yes, I should! But I don't understand. What sort of a city do you
mean?"
"Oh, it's nothing," answered the boy, affecting carelessness. "It's only
a little paper city on a board. I don't believe you'd care to see it,
father. Let's talk about Christmas."
"No. I want to see what you have made. Where is it? I'll go with you."
Newton laughed.
"I'll bring it, if you really want me to. It's easy enough to carry. The
whole thing's only paper!"
He left the workshop and returned before Overholt had finished cutting
the thread of the screw he was making. The man turned as the boy pushed
the door open with his foot, and came in carrying what had evidently
once been the top of a deal table.
On the board he had built an ingenious model of a town, or part of one,
but it was not finished. It was entirely made of bits of cardboard,
chips of wood, the sides of match-boxes, and odds and ends of all sorts,
which he picked up wherever he saw them and brought home in his pocket
for his purpose. He had an immense supply of such stuff stored away,
much more than he could ever use.
Overholt looked at it with admiration, but said nothing. It was the
college town where he had lived so happily and hoped to live again. It
was distinctly recognisable, and many of the buildings were not only
cleverly made, but were coloured very like the originals. He was so much
interested that he forgot to say anything.
"It's a silly thing, anyway," said Newton, disappointed by his silence.
"It's like toys!"
Overholt looked up, and the boy saw his pleased face.
"It's very far from silly," he said. "I believe you're born to be a
builder, boy! It's not only not silly, but it's very well done indeed!"
"I'll bet you can't tell what the place is," observed Newton, a secret
joy stealing through him at his father's words.
"Know it? I should think I did, and I wish we were there now! Here's the
College, and there's our house in the street on the other side of the
common. The church is first-rate, it's really like it--and there's the
Roman Catholic Chapel and the Public Library in Main Street."
"Why, you really do recognise the places!" cried Newton in delight. "I
didn't think anybody'd know them!"
"One would have to be blind not to, if one knew the town," said
Overholt. "And there's the dear old lane!" He was absorbed in the model.
"And the three hickory trees, and even the little bench!"
"Why, do you remember that bench, father?"
Overholt looked up again, quickly and rather dreamily.
"Yes. It was there that I asked your mother to marry me," he said.
"Not really? Then I'm glad I put it in!"
"So am I, for the dear old time's sake and for her sake, and for yours,
my boy. Tell me when you made this, and how you can remember it all so
well."
The lad sat down on the high stool again before the lathe and looked
through the dingy window at the scraggy trees outside, beyond the
forlorn yard.
"Oh, I don't know," he said. "I kind of remember it, I suppose, because
I liked it better than this. And when I first had the idea I was sitting
out there in the yard looking at this board. It belongs to a broken
table that had been thrown out there. And I carried it up to my room
when you were out. I thought you wouldn't mind my taking it. And I
picked up scraps that might be useful, and got some gum, and old Barbara
made me some flour paste. It's got green now, and it smells like
thunder, but it's good still. That's about all, I suppose. Now I'll take
it away again. I keep it in the dark closet behind my room, because that
doesn't leak when it rains."
"Don't take it away," said Overholt suddenly. "I'll make room for it
here, and you can work at it while I'm busy, and in the evenings I'll
try and help you, and we'll finish it together."
Newton was amazed.
"Why, father, it's playing! How can you go to work at play? It would be
so funny! But, of course, if you really would help me a little--you've
got such lots of nice things!"
He wistfully eyed a little coil of some very fine steel wire which would
make a beautiful telegraph. Newton even dreamt of making the trolley,
too, in the Main Street, but that would be a very troublesome job; and
as for the railway station, it was easy enough to build a shed and a
platform, but what is a railway station without a train?
Overholt did not answer the boy at once, and when he spoke there was a
queer little quaver in his voice.
"We'll call it our little City of Hope," he said, "and perhaps we can
'go to work to play,' as you call it, so hard that Hope will really come
and live in the City."
"Well," said Newton, "I never thought you'd ever care to see it! Shall I
go up and get my stuff, and the gum and the flour paste, and bring them
down here, father? But the flour paste smells pretty bad--it might give
you a headache."
"Bring it down, my boy. My headaches don't come from such things."
"Don't they? It's true that stuff you use here's about as bad as
anything, till you get used to it. What is it, anyway?"
Overholt gave him the almost unpronounceable name of some recently
discovered substance, and smiled at his expression as he listened.
"If that's its name," said the boy gravely, "it sounds like the way it
smells. I wonder what a skunk's name is in science. But the flour
paste's pretty bad too. You'll see!"
He went off, and his father finished cutting the little screw while he
was gone, and then turned to look at the model again, and became
absorbed in tracing the well-known streets and trying to recall the
shops and houses in each, and the places where his friends had lived,
and no doubt lived still, for college towns do not change as fast as
others. He was amazed at the memory the boy had shown for details; if
the lad had not yet developed any special talent, he had at least proved
that he possessed one of those natural gifts which are sometimes alone
enough to make success. The born builder's eye is like an ear for music,
a facility for languages, or the power of drawing from nature; all the
application in the world will not do in years what any one of these does
instantly, spontaneously, instinctively, without the smallest effort.
You cannot make talent out of a combination of taste and industry. You
cannot train a cart-horse to trot a mile in a little over a minute.
Newton returned, bringing his materials, to describe which would be
profitless, if it were possible. He had everything littered together in
two battered deal candle-boxes, including the broken soup-plate
containing the flour paste, a loathely, mouldering little mess that
diffused a nauseous odour, distinctly perceptible through that of the
unpronounceable chemical on which the Air-Motor was to depend for its
existence.
The light outside was failing in the murky November air, and Overholt
lit the big reflecting lamp that hung over the work-table. There was
another above the lathe, for no gas or electricity was to be had so far
from the town, and one of old Barbara's standing causes of complaint
against Overholt was his reckless use of kerosene--she thought it would
be better if he had more fat turkeys and rump-steaks and less light.
So the man and the boy "went to work to play" at building the City of
Hope, for at least an hour before supper and half an hour after it,
almost every day; and with the boy's marvellous memory and the father's
skill, and the delicious profusion of fresh material which Newton kept
finding in every corner of the workshop, it grew steadily, till it was a
little work of art in its way. There were the ups and downs, the crooked
old roads and lanes and the straight new streets, the little wooden
cottages and the big brick houses, and there was the grassy common with
its trees and its tiny iron railing; and John Henry easily made posts to
carry the trolley wires, which had seemed an impossible dream to the
boy, beyond all realisation; and one day, when the inventor seemed
farther from the tangent-balance than ever, he spent a whole afternoon
in making a dozen little trolley-cars that ran on real wheels, made by
sawing off little sections from a lead pencil, which is the best thing
in the world for that, because the lead comes out and leaves nice round
holes for the axles. When the first car was painted red and yellow and
ran up and down Main Street, guided by the wire above and only needing
one little artificial push to send it either way, it looked so real that
the boy was in ecstasies of delight.
"It's worth while to be a great inventor to be able to make things like
that!" he cried, and Overholt was as much pleased by the praise as an
opera singer is who is called out three times before the curtain after
the first act.
So the little City of Hope grew, and they both felt that Hope herself
was soon coming to dwell therein, if she had not come already.
III
HOW THEY MADE BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW
But then something happened; for Overholt was tormented by the vague
consciousness of a coming idea, so that he had headaches and could not
sleep at night. It flashed upon him at last one evening when Newton was
in bed and he was sitting before his motor, wishing he had the thousand
dollars which would surely complete it, even if he used the most
expensive materials in the market.
The idea which developed suddenly in all its clearness was that he had
made one of the most important parts of the machine exactly the converse
of what it should be; what was on the right should have been on the
left, and what was down should certainly have been up. Then the engine
would work, even if the tangent-balance were a very poor affair indeed.
The particular piece of brass casting which was the foundation of that
part had been made in New York, and, owing to the necessity for its
being finished very accurately and machine planed and turned, it had
cost a great deal of money. Already it had been made and spoilt three
times over, and now it was perfectly clear that it must be cast over
again in a reversed form. It was quite useless to make the balance yet,
for it would be of no use till the right casting was finished; it would
have to be reversed too, and the tangent would apply to a reversed
curve.
He had no money for the casting, but even before trying to raise the
cash it was necessary to make the wooden model. He could do that, and he
set to work to sketch the drawing within five minutes after the idea had
once flashed upon him. As his eye followed the lines made by his pencil,
he became more and more convinced that he was right. When the rough
sketch was done he looked up at the engine. Its familiar features seemed
to be drawn into a diabolical grimace of contempt at his stupidity, and
it looked as if it were conscious and wanted to throw the wrongly-made
piece at his head. But he was overwrought just then and could have
fancied any folly.
He rose, shook himself, and then took a long pull at a black bottle that
always stood on a shelf. When a man puts a black bottle to his lips,
tips it up, and takes down several good pulls almost without drawing
breath, most people suppose that he is a person of vicious habits. In
Overholt's case most people would have been wrong. The black bottle
contained cold tea; it was strong, but it was only tea, and that is the
finest drink in the world for an inventor or an author to work on. When
I say an author I mean a poor writer of prose, for I have always been
told that all poets are either mad, or bad, or both. Many of them must
be bad, or they could not write such atrocious poems; but madness is
different; perhaps they read their own verses.
When Overholt had swallowed his cold tea, he got out his drawing
materials, stretched a fresh sheet of thick draughtsman's paper on the
board, and sat down between the motor that would not move and the
little city in which Hope had taken lodgings for a while, and he went to
work with ruler, scale and dividers, and the hard wood template for
drawing the curves he had constructed for the tangent-balance by a very
abstruse mathematical calculation. That was right, at all events, only,
as it was to be reversed, he laid it on the paper with the under-side
up.
He worked nearly all night to finish the drawing, slept two hours in a
battered Shaker rocking-chair by the fire, woke in broad daylight, drank
more cold tea, and went at once to his lathe, for the new piece was in
the nature of a cylinder, and a good deal of the work could be done by
turning.
The chisel and the lathe seemed to be talking to each other over the
block of wood, and what they said rang like a tune in John Henry's head.
"Bricks without straw, bricks without straw, bricks without straw,"
repeated the lathe regularly, at each revolution, and when it said
"bricks" the treadle was up, and when it said "straw" the treadle was
down, for of course it was only a foot lathe, though a good one.
"Sh--sh--sh--ever so much better than no bricks at all--sh--sh--sh,"
answered the sharp chisel as it pressed and bit the wood, and made a
little irregular clattering when it was drawn away, and then came
forward against the block again with a long hushing sound; and Overholt
was inclined to accept its opinion, and worked on as if an obliging
brassfounder were waiting outside to take the model away at once and
cast it for nothing, or at least on credit.
But no such worthy and confiding manufacturer appeared, even on the
evening of the second day, when the wooden model was beautifully
finished and ready for the foundry. While the inventor was busy, Newton
had worked alone in a corner when he had time to spare from his lessons,
but he understood what was going on, and he did not accomplish much
beyond painting the front of the National Bank in the City of Hope and
planning a possible Wild West Show to be set up on the outskirts; the
tents would be easy to make, but the horses were beyond his skill, or
his father's; it would not be enough that they should have a leg at each
corner and a head and a tail.
He understood well enough what was the matter, for he had seen similar
things happen before. A pessimist is defined to be a person who has
lived with an optimist, and every inventor is that. Poor Newton had seen
that particular part of the engine spoiled and made over three times,
and he understood perfectly that it was all wrong again and must be cast
once more. But he kept his reflections to himself and tried to think
about the City of Hope.
"I wish," said John Henry, sitting down opposite the boy at last, and
looking at what he had done, "that the National Bank in Main Street were
real!"
He eyed it wistfully.
"Oh well," answered the boy, "we couldn't rob it, because that's
stealing, so I don't see what particular good it would do!"
"Perhaps the business people in the City of Hope would be different from
the bankers in New York," observed Overholt, thoughtfully.
"I don't believe it, father," Newton answered in a sceptical tone. "If
they were bankers they'd be rich, and you remember the sermon Sunday
before last, about it's being easier for the camel to get through the
rich man--no, which is it? I forget. It doesn't matter, anyway, because
we can imagine any kind of people we choose in our city, can't we? Say,
father, what's the matter? Are you going to cast that piece over again?
That'll be the fourth time, won't it?"
"It would be, my boy, but it won't be. They won't cast it for nothing,
and I cannot raise the money. You cannot make bricks without straw."
He looked steadily down at the tiny front of the Bank in Main Street,
and a hungry look came into his eyes.
But Newton had a practical mind, even at thirteen.
"I was thinking," he said presently. "It looks as if we were going to
get stuck some day. What are we going to do then, father? I was thinking
about it just now. How are we going to get anything to eat if we have no
money?"
"I shall have to go back to teaching mathematics for a living, I
suppose."
"And give up the Motor?" Newton had never yet heard him suggest such a
thing.
"Yes," Overholt answered in a low tone; and that was all he said.
"Oh, that's ridiculous. You'd just die, that's all!"
Newton stared at the engine that was a failure. It looked as if it ought
to work, he thought, with its neat cylinders, its polished levers, its
beautifully designed gear. It stood under a big case made of thick glass
plates set in an iron frame with a solid top; a chain ran through two
cast-iron wheels overhead to a counterpoise in the corner, by which
device it was easily raised and lowered. The Motor was a very expensive
affair, and had to be carefully protected from dust and all injury,
though it was worth nothing at present except for old brass and iron,
unless the new part could be made.
"Come, my boy, let's think of something more cheerful!" Overholt said,
making an effort to rouse himself and concentrated his attention on the
paper model. "Christmas is coming in three weeks, you know, and it will
come just the same in the little City. I'm sure the people will decorate
their houses and the church. Of course we cannot see the insides of the
houses, but in Boston they put wreaths in the windows. And we'll have a
snowstorm, just as we used to have, and we can clear it away afterwards!
Wasn't there a holly tree somewhere near the College? You haven't put
that in yet. You have no idea how cheerful it will look! To-morrow we'll
find a very small sprig with berries on it, and plant it just in the
right place. I'm sure you remember where it stood."
"Real leaves would be too big," observed the boy. "They wouldn't look
right. Of course, one could cut the branches out of tin and paint 'em
green with red spots, and stick them into a twig for the trunk. But it's
rather hard to do."
"Let's try," said Overholt. "I've got some fine chisels and some very
thin brass, but I don't think I could draw the branches as well as you
could."
"Oh, I can draw them something like, if you'll only cut 'em out," the
boy answered cheerfully. "Come on, father! Who says we can't make bricks
without straw? I'll bet anything we can!"
So they worked together steadily, and for an hour or two the inventor
was so busy in cutting out tiny branches of imaginary holly with a very
small chisel that he did not look once at the plate glass from which
his engine seemed to be grinning at him, in fiendish delight over his
misfortunes. There were times when he was angry with it, outright, as if
it knew what he was doing and did not mean to give in to him and let
itself be invented.
But now the tune of the lathe and the chisel still ran on in his head,
for he had heard it through two whole days and could not get rid of it.
"Bricks without straw, bricks without straw!" repeated the lathe
viciously. "Ever so much better than no bricks at all, sh--sh--sh!"
answered the chisel, gibbering and hissing like an idiot.
"You will certainly be lying on straw before long, and then I suppose
you'll wish you had something else!" squeaked the little chisel with
which he was cutting out holly leaves, as it went through the thin
plates into the wood of the bench under each push of his hand.
The things in the workshop all seemed to be talking to him together, and
made his head ache.
"I had a letter from your mother to-day," he said, because it was
better to hear his own voice say anything than to listen to such
depressing imaginary conversations. "I'm sorry to say she sees no chance
of getting home before the spring."
"I don't know where you'd put her if she came here," answered the
practical Newton. "Your room leaks when it rains, and so does mine. You
two would have to sleep in the parlour. I guess it'll be better if she
doesn't come now."
"Oh, for her, far better," assented Overholt. "They've got a beautiful
flat in Munich, and everything they can possibly think of. Your mother's
only complaint, so far as that goes, is that those girls are completely
spoilt by too much luxury!"
"What is luxury, exactly, father?" asked Newton, who always wanted to
know things.
"I shall never know myself, and perhaps you never will either!" The
wretched inventor tried to laugh. "But that's no answer to your
question, is it? I suppose luxury means always having twice as much of
everything as you can possibly use, and having it about ten times as
fine and expensive as other people can afford."
"I don't see any use in that," said the boy. "Now I know just how much
turkey and cranberry sauce and ice-cream I really need, and if I get
just a little more than that, it's Christmas. I don't mean much more,
but about half a helping. I know all about proverbs. Haven't I copied
millions of 'em in learning to write. One reason why it's so slow to
learn is that the things you have to write are perfect nonsense. 'Enough
is as good as a feast!' All I can say is, the man who made that proverb
never had a feast, or he'd have known better! This green paint doesn't
dry very quick, father. We'll have to wait till to-morrow before we put
in the red spots for the berries. I wish I had some little red beads.
They'd stick on the wet paint now, like one o'clock."
There were no red beads, so he rose to go to bed. When he had said
good-night and had reached the door, he stopped and looked back again.
"Say, father, haven't you anything you can sell to get some more money
for the Motor?"
John Henry shook his weary head and smiled sadly.
"Nothing that would bring nearly enough to pay for the casting," he
answered. "Don't worry about it, boy. Leave that to me--I'm used to it.
Go to bed and sleep, and you'll feel like an Air-Motor yourself in the
morning!"
"That's the worst of it," returned the boy. "Just to sit there under a
glass case and have you take care of me and do nothing, like a girl.
That's the way I feel sometimes."