[I]
INTRODUCTORY
Two boys sat on a log whittling. Conversation had ceased and they both seemed absorbed in their work. Presently the younger one became aware of the silence and glanced at the older boy. He gave an exclamation and jumped to his feet. "Why," he cried, "you are making a knife out of wood. Isn't it a beauty! Is it a dagger?"
"No" replied the other, "it is a paper-knife for opening letters and cutting the pages of magazines. It is for father's desk, for his birthday."
"It's a dandy!" continued the youngster. "How can you make such fine things? Why can't I do that kind of work?"
"You can do it," replied Ralph, "but just now there are several reasons why you don't."
"What are they?"
"Well, in the first place you start to whittle without having any clear idea of what you are at work on. It's for all the world like setting out to walk without knowing where you are going. If you start that way, the probabilities are that you will get nowhere, and when you get back and father asks where you have been, you say, 'Oh, nowhere; just took a walk.' That's the way with your knife work. You just whittle and make a lot of chips, and when you get through you have nothing to show for your time and labour. If you want to know a secret—I never start to cut without first making a careful sketch of just what I want to make, with all the important dimensions on it.
"Another reason you don't get any results is that you don't know how to hold your knife, and still another is that you work with a dull tool. Why, that knife of yours is hardly sharp enough to cut butter."
"Will you show me how to do that kind of work?" asked the youngster humbly.