If the grown people would only let the bath-room alone, there is no end to the fun which an ingenious lad could have in that useful little room.
As a Lake for His Fleet,
and as a receiving-tank for his water-pets are only two of the uses which the bath-tub suggests to a bright boy. When he sees the faucet he realizes that this can afford him power for all sorts of machinery, if he can arrange a water-wheel under it to transmit the power.
Every country boy knows how to make water-wheels, and every summer the springs and brooks all over the land turn these little wheels in exactly the same manner which the larger streams turn the big wheels for the factories and mills on their banks.
But there are thousands of boys in our great cities who have never seen
A Water-wheel,
and for the use of these boys the accompanying illustrations were drawn.
Figs. 139-141.
Fig. 139 shows a four-sided soft-pine stick, with square ends, and if you have a good sharp knife it requires but little work to trim off the four edges of this stick until it has the form of a six-sided lead-pencil (Fig. 140), after which but little skill is required to whittle the ends down to the size of the hole in a thread-spool (Fig. 141).