He was a coppersmith of old Boston, and his shop of one room was down near the wharves where British ships lay at anchor and the fishermen plied their trade all day. On Sundays Deacon Drowne went to the white meeting-house on the Common and passed the contribution basket, and rapped the head of any child who went to sleep during the sermon.
“HE PERCHED HIMSELF UPON A STOOL BESIDE HIS WORK BENCH”
When Monday came, though, the Deacon was a very different person. He put on a little round cap and a short leather apron. He perched himself upon a stool beside his work bench and chuckled like some little, wizened gnome of the mountain as he looked at his sheets of copper and brass, his scissors, dies, and the many hammers, large and small, that he used for shaping metals.
The trade of a coppersmith was not one to interest children greatly in those days. The Deacon had to patch some housewife’s preserving kettle, or make copper toes for the shoes of a little Colonial lad who had worn out the leather too soon to suit his father’s sense of economy. Sometimes he had a clock to mend, or a teakettle that needed a new handle.
None of these were unusual enough tasks so to attract the boys and girls of Boston. They were familiar with teakettles, having to fill them so often, and copper toes on their shoes hurt their feet. It was something quite different that drew them to the window and door of the coppersmith.
“What do you suppose Deacon Drowne will have hidden under his work bench to-day?” Samuel would ask.
“Oh, I do not know. I am curious to see. Is he not a person of great skill and many surprises?” Abigail would reply.
It was quite true. The old coppersmith saw possibilities in his craft that would have amazed his patrons who thought that the Deacon’s mind was bent all day long on patches and wires. When his day’s work was over the old coppersmith closed his shutter and lighted a candle. He lighted, too, a small stove in which he could heat his metals and weld them into queer and curious shapes. It seemed to him that the sheets of copper and brass in which he worked were too beautiful for the commonplace uses to which he had to put them.
His mind went back to the days of his boyhood in England when he lived on a farm near the sea and could watch the ships beyond the fields where the sea lay, blue and clear. As these thoughts came to him, he welded his metals to make the figures that his memory painted for him. No wonder the children were excited at what the coppersmith would show them that he had made over night!