to fit the end of the horn, take a cedar block (Fig. 111) of such dimensions that there will be no risk of splitting it with an auger, and bore a hole through its centre, after which it may be trimmed down to any required dimensions. Next put three sides of your box together and fasten them securely, with small brads.
You can now see the exact form of the small end, and can whittle your cedar mouth-piece (Fig. 112) to fit the little end of the box, and round off the protruding end, as shown in the diagram.
The diagrams of the block and mouth-piece are drawn on a much larger scale than those of the slab and box, that they may be better understood.
With a piece of sand-paper, wrapped around a pine stick, sand-paper the hole in the cedar mouth-piece until it is perfectly smooth. Put the mouth-piece in place, tack on the remaining side to the box, and your Wabash horn is finished.
You can now practise until you learn the bugle-calls, and then hang it under the eaves of your boat, with a just feeling of pride in the knowledge that you are not only a boatman, and a modern wide-awake boy of to-day, but that you lack neither the skill nor the self-reliance of the boy of the day before yesterday.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE AMERICAN BOY’S HOUSE-BOAT.
When the great West of the United States began to attract immigrants from the Eastern coast settlements, the Ohio River rolled between banks literally teeming with all sorts of wild game and wilder men: then it was that the American house-boat had its birth.