The Story of Porcelain

by Sara Ware Bassett

"If you don't like it you can at least take it as a medicine," remarked the Doctor with a grin.

Dr. Swift was as good as his word, for when Theo returned to school the following day he found that in addition to his other work he was expected to spend an hour each morning in the carpenter's shop, a realm toward which he had always maintained the keenest scorn. It seemed such a foolish thing to learn to saw and drive nails! What was the use of taking lessons? When a board was to be cut what was there to do but take the saw and cut it? It was easy enough. As for driving nails—that feat required no teaching.

But to Theo's amazement it needed only the first lesson to demonstrate to him that these superficial conclusions were quite wrong. It was one thing to cut a board haphazard; but quite another matter to cut it evenly, and on a ruled line. Nor was the driving of nails as simple as he had supposed. At the end of the first hour Theo, feeling very awkward and clumsy, and rubbing a finger that had been too slow to get out of the path of the hammer, left the workshop.

"I never dreamed it would be so hard!" he muttered, viewing his bleeding knuckle with chagrin.

The lesson of the following day did not prove much easier, and its difficulties aroused the lad's fighting spirit.

"I am going to learn to saw and drive nails properly if it takes me the rest of my life!" he declared resolutely. "The very idea! Why, some of those little chaps in the sloyd room can chisel and plane like carpenters. I'll bet I can do it, too, if I stick at it."

Therefore it came about that instead of missing tennis and basket-ball as he had expected, Theo became completely absorbed in his new interest—so absorbed that his father soon began to fear that his studies would suffer. Early and late Theo was at his bench with his tools. He tried faithfully not to slight his books, but there was no use pretending he did not enjoy his carpentry. He was making a footstool now, a little wooden piece with turned legs which he was to stain with orange shellac and give to his mother. Already he had finished a square tray and a handkerchief box. When the stool was completed he was preparing for a more ambitious enterprise, a thing he longed yet hesitated to venture upon—a wooden bookrack for Mr. Croyden.

It was to be made from oak, not from the ordinary pine wood on which, up to this time, he had been working; and it was to be a much more elaborately finished article than anything he had undertaken. He had delayed beginning it until the closing part of the term in order that he might have the benefit of every atom of training he could get before he made the first cuts in the wood. As he now framed his plans for the making of the gift he smiled to think how impossible such a project would have been a few months ago.

"Dad was right!" he affirmed. "Training your hands is just like training any other part of your body. The longer and more regularly you keep at it the more expert you get. Sloyd is no different from rowing, or football, or tennis."

With the help of his instructor he drew his design, measured his pattern, and sent for the wood.