Mr. Whitman bought James a large blank book, and in it he set down his sums and printed with a pen headings beginning with capitals at the top of the pages, and took great pains with the writing and the forms of the figures. In addition to this he took some brass mountings from the stock of an old fowling-piece, put them in a vice and filed them all away, and sprinkled the filings over the headings of his pages before the ink was dry, having also put glue in the ink to make the brass dust adhere. On the last day of school the master passed this and the books of several other boys around among the school committee as examples of proficiency.
On the evening of examination day they had the spelling school, and James out-spelled Morse, Riggs and Orcutt. Peter was fully occupied during the spelling holding his hand over Bertie’s mouth to keep him from saying “good” at every success of his pupil and loud enough for everybody to hear.
Mr. Whitman and his wife, and even grandfather attended both the examination and the spelling school. To go out in the evening except to a religious meeting was something that the old gentleman of late years never had done.
The family went home rejoicing in the success of their endeavors, and experiencing that unalloyed happiness, the result of benefiting others; and the term which had opened so gloomily for James, closed in triumph.
Mr. Whitman lived some distance from the saw mill, and accordingly had a sawpit in the door-yard where he often sawed small quantities of stuff for wheels, harrows and other uses, and in the course of the fall and winter the old gentleman had, when he wished to saw anything, taken James to help him, and thus the latter had obtained considerable practice in working with that implement.
Mr. Whitman had in the winter, cut and hewn out some rock-maple logs, to saw into plank for mill-wheels, and cogs, which required to be sawed very accurately; he also had cut some red-oak for common uses, in respect to which he was not so particular; he therefore resolved to saw the red-oak first, and, if James proved equal to the work, to cut out the mill-stuff afterwards. The two had worked ten days with the whipsaw, when Mrs. Whitman said to her husband,—
“How do you get along, sawing your stuff with James?”
“We get along well. It has always been my way, since father has been so lame, when I had timber of any great amount to saw, to hire Mr. John Dunbar, give him nine shillings or two dollars sometimes a day, and board him; but I thought as James seemed to take to handling tools, and was a strong, tough boy, and I was going to have him for some years, I would try and teach him, and in two days more we shall cut all the stuff, and it will be done as well as though I had hired Dunbar, though it has taken much longer, and made harder work for myself, and after haying I mean to learn him to saw on top.”
“A good whip-sawyer, husband, always commands good wages, and it will be fitting James to get his living when he leaves you.”
“I intend to do more for him, and must, to carry out the idea I started with, which was to treat him, as far as fitting him to make his way in the world is concerned, as I do my own boys; not only teach him all I can about labor, but also give him some ideas about property, and the value of a dollar, for a man may work his fingers off to no purpose, if he don’t know how to take care of what he gets.