The Jack-Knife Man

by Ellis Parker Butler

“But I do, I do,” said Mrs. Montgomery eagerly. “You mean you lack the sympathetic audience.”

“Maybe so,” said Peter doubtfully. “What I do mean is, that I'd miss the look in his eyes and how he quirked up his mouth whilst I was cutting out a toy. Maybe it looks to you like this hand and this old whetted-down jack-knife was what made them toys, but that ain't so! No, ma'am! All I done was to take a piece of maple wood and start things going. 'This is going to be a cat, Buddy,' I'd say, maybe, and he'd sparkle up at me and say, 'A funny old cat, Uncle Peter!' and then it had got to be a funny old cat, like he said. And his eyes and his mouth would tell me just how funny to make that cat, and just how funny not to make it. He sort of seen each whittle before I seen it myself, and told me how to make it by the look of his eyes and the way his mouth sort of felt for it until I got it just right. And then he would laugh. So you see, now that Buddy's gone, I couldn't—no, I guess I couldn't!”

“And you made no more after Buddy—after he left?”

“He didn't die,” said Peter, “if that's what you mean. He was took away. Yes'm. I did make a couple. I made a couple more cats to put in the gunny-sack. But that was because I sort of saw Buddy a sittin' there on the floor, even when he was gone.”

“But don't you see,” cried Mrs. Montgomery eagerly, “that you can always see Buddy? Don't you know there are hundreds of other Buddys—boys and girls—all over the country, and that, as you work, a man of your imagination can feel their eyes and smiling mouths guiding your hand and your knife? They want your 'funny cats,' too, Mr. Lane. Don't you see that you could sit here in your lonely boat, and have all the children of America clustered about your knee?”

“Yes, I do sort of see it,” said Peter, “but it's a thing I'm liable to forget any time.”

“But you must not forget it!” exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. “Your work is too rare, too valuable to permit you to forget How many artists, do you suppose, are, like the musicians, able to draw their inspiration face to face from their audiences? Very few, Mr. Lane. Do you suppose a Dickens was able to have those for whom he wrote crowded in his workroom? And yet those he worked to please guided his pen. He heard the laughs and saw the tears and was guided by them as he chose the words that were to cause the laughs and tears. You, too, can see the children's faces.”

She paused, for she saw in Peter's eyes that he understood and agreed.

“But then there's another reason I can't whittle more toys,” he said. “I've got about thirty more cords of wood to saw this winter.”

“But that is not like you!” said Mrs. Montgomery reproachfully. “You see I know you, Mr. Lane! You are not the man to saw wood when all the Buddys are eager for your toys.”