The tools for the lack of which he was the most crippled in his work were a pair of smiths' tongs, a hammer, and a punch. The kitchen tongs were wretched things to hold iron with. It required all his strength to hold a small piece of iron, and the jaws were so short that it was constantly slipping; whereas, the handles of a smiths' tongs, being crossed like scissor-blades, act as a lever, and the jaws are long, to hold the iron; while a smiths' hammer, being much heavier, and with a larger face, deals a more effective blow, and is, by its form, adapted to the work. In addition to all this, he had but one pair of kitchen tongs, and when he had to weld two pieces of iron, he made a pair of wooden ones, with which his wife took out one of the pieces of iron, and held it till it was "stuck."
He longed—O, how he longed!—for a little iron that he could call his own. It consumed him—this desire—even as does the greed of gold a miser. He reckoned with a piece of charcoal on the top of the bellows the amount of money he had on hand, the cost of getting Drew to make him the tools, and the probable proceeds of the articles he had to sell. To his dismay he found, after purchasing even the few tools he must have, there would remain but a mere trifle with which to buy iron.
"I must," he said to himself, "either go without the iron or the tools. No, I won't; I'll make the tools.—I will do it, and save the money to buy iron."
Just then his wife came in to call him to supper, and overheard the remark, but did not, as before, say, "William, you never can do it."
CHAPTER IV. HAMMER AND TONGS.
Most persons accompany the act of close thought with some physical effort; some whittle, smoke, or chew tobacco furiously. William Richardson was not an exception. When he had fed the cattle for night, brought in the night's wood, a turn of water, and renewed the fire, he placed the long handle of his wife's frying-pan across a tub, and began to shell corn.
His wife, who knew there was corn enough shelled for a long time, made no remark, but noticed, while she sat spinning at her flax-wheel, that he dropped a good many ears of corn into the tub half shelled, and some untouched. He was evidently thinking of anything but shelling corn.
Thus they sat an hour or more; not a word spoken. On the other hand, it was whir, whir, whir; scrape, scrape, scrape. At length his wife saw, as the cobs he had been from time to time flinging into the fire caught and blazed, the muscles of his face relax, and a smile flit across it.