"Yes; try it in any fair way, and if it breaks or turns, you needn't take it."
Bradford, after making a thorough trial, took it. It was soon noised round that William Richardson had made an axe for John Bradford that beat Drew's all hollow. Every body wondered at the ease with which he took up anything, little knowing the struggle it cost him.
His farming work now came on; but at intervals he made axes that found a ready sale. He made a small pair of bellows in the fall, and a little forge in the chimney corner. The boys learned to make nails, and made nearly all Montague's nails in the winter evenings. He paid less and less attention to farming, and more to working in iron, paid for his land, and built him a frame house. In the autumn of the year that he made the first axe, he found that he could not well make ox and horse-shoes without a vice, and resolved to make something that would answer the purpose.
He began by taking two wide, flat bars of iron, and turned the edge of them over the edge of the anvil, like the head of a railroad spike, in order that, when the flat surfaces came together, these edges might make a face to the vice. To the other ends of each of the bars he welded pieces of the old crane, rendering that portion of the vice that was to fasten to the bench long enough to reach to the ground, and rise eight inches above the edge of the bench, and welded an old horse-shoe on the back side to fasten it to the bench. The other he made but two-thirds as long, and by making a slot in one, with a hole for a pin, and punching an eye in the other, he contrived both to connect them, and form a hinge joint on which the outer leg of the vice might traverse. Two holes were now punched to receive a bolt that was designed to answer the purpose of a screw, one end of which terminated in a head; the remaining portion was punched at short distances with eyes very long and wide, to receive broad, thick keys or wedges that would endure hard driving.
He now set up the permanent portion of his vice, put the lower end into a flat rock set in the ground, and fastened the upper part to the bench, brought up the other side, and put the bolt through both. The hinge at the bottom permitted the outer jaw of the vice to play back and forth on the bolt in order to open or close it. By means of tapering wedges driven into the eyes in the bolt, he could wedge a piece of iron firmly into his vice to file it, could turn the calks of a horse-shoe or set them at any angle he wished. Whenever the vice did not come up to the eye, and the wedge would not draw, he slipped washers—iron rings—over the bolt to fill the space, and then entering the point of his key, drove it with great force. It was not very convenient, but it answered the purpose effectually, for it was substituting the power of the wedge for that of the screw.
"Mother," said Clem, one morning, "will you let me have a piece of your tongs?"
"My tongs, child? What do you want of my tongs?"
"To make some bow-pins—iron ones—for my steer's yoke; father's gone, and said we might play."