To note how many wheels of toil
One thought, one word, can set in motion!
There’s not a ship that sails the ocean,
But every climate, every soil,
Must bring its tribute, great or small,
And help to build the wooden wall!’
It was a curious thing that the greatest of the advantages of living in a barge disclosed itself unexpectedly. When we made up our minds to buy a barge I was free to live where I pleased, but shortly after we had bought her I received an offer of an appointment which would require me to be in London every day. I could not afford to refuse this appointment, and we reflected what a pretty mess we should have been in if we had taken a house in the town where we had intended to send the boys to school. We should have had to get rid of the lease of the house, and probably have lost a good deal of money in the transaction. As it was, we had only to withdraw the boys’ names from the school, choose another school within striking distance of London, and anchor our barge fairly near a railway station from which I could travel daily to London. The change of plan cost us nothing.
My work in London was to begin in September, but when I found it impossible to finish the barge in time, I applied for a month’s postponement, and the partners in the firm, who were yachtsmen, admitted the propriety of my request and granted it like sportsmen.
The barge had now to be completed at breakneck speed. The haste robbed the entertaining labour of part of its joy; still, we experienced a good deal of that satisfaction which is presumably enjoyed in primitive societies where every man builds his own house and goes hunting for his dinner.
We could bicycle from our cottage to the quay at Fleetwick in five minutes. I engaged to help me two handy men: Tom, a sailor, and Harry, a landsman, both, like myself, rough carpenters. Of course, everyone in the place came to see the Will Arding; never before had there been so many loiterers on the quay. People came on board so freely to watch the floating house daily grow into shape under our hands that I grew expert at mechanically repeating my explanations with nails in my mouth while I kept to my work.