I.—THE SHOP ITSELF.
IF there is anything a boy really likes to have, it is a workshop of his own.
But then it must be really his own; a place where he can pound and hammer, saw and whittle, and make all the litter and noise he wants to, without having to clear up things.
A boy likes a place where he can leave a thing half finished and be sure of finding it again. He wants a key to the door, so that he can lock up his treasures and know he shall find them safe the next spare hour he gets to work at some pet notion.
Housemaids, and sometimes even mothers, don’t see the difference between unfinished work and rubbish, and off into the kindlings goes something that has cost a boy a lot of thought and work. No wonder a fellow who isn’t a saint, but only a human boy, gets out of patience and wishes emphatically, that “folks would just let his things alone!”
So I say, let every boy have his own workshop and a key to it.
Where shall the workshop be?