"I never would do that, husband. If we must take that money for anything, let us take it for the school. They are going to have a school at Montague's the latter part of the winter."
This man had three rooms in his house, and it was built of hewn timber, in one of which the school was to be kept. Richardson and his wife had received a good common school education, and were anxious that their children should not grow up in ignorance.
CHAPTER II. THE FIRST MONEY.
From the preceding chapter our readers will perceive the value of iron, and also the importance to the community of the mechanic who is able to work it. We would invite them to reflect upon some facts that may seem incredible to them at first view. A boy who has no disposition to reflect is not much of a boy, and when grown, will only be a servant to those who do.
Iron is far more valuable than gold, and the blacksmith than the jeweler, for the same reason that bread is worth more than diamonds, and water than silver. Gold has a very great representative value in civilized society, where iron is abundant, and it will buy iron, and is an equivalent for the work of the smith; but it is only because men have agreed to make it so. Whereas iron has a value in itself considered. It fells the forest, tills the soil, annihilates time and distance, and underlies the whole economy of domestic life; for our readers will bear in mind that steel is only another form of iron.
The value iron acquires under the hammer is something wonderful. It is said that a bar of iron worth $5 is worth $10.50 when made into horse-shoes, $55 when made into needles, $3,285 made into penknife blades, $29,480 in shirt buttons, and $250,000, in balance springs of watches. Boys may, from this, see what labor is worth, and learn to value and respect it, for it is the labor the mind put into the iron that so increases its value. Consider what would be the result if there were no iron.
A boy might search long to find a better subject for his theme than iron and its uses, or one the treatment of which would be more instructive to himself. The showers of sparks you see pouring out of a blacksmith's chimney, at times, of an evening when he is pressed with work, and forgets the ten-hour system, have a language to a reflecting mind; they mean power, progress, the plough, the telegraph, the mariner's compass, and the sword.