“Isn’t it?”
“It is, however, a very useful employment,” continued Mr. Davenport, “and there must be men to engage in it. It is an honorable employment, too, for all useful labor is honorable. But I should not call it a very desirable employment. The logger not only has to labor very hard, but he must go far away from his home, and deprive himself of nearly every comfort of civilized life, and expose himself to many dangers. And for all this hardship and toil, he does not receive so much pay as many a mechanic earns in his shop, with half the effort.”
“Does not Mr. Preston make a great deal of money at logging?” inquired Clinton.
“I suppose he makes a fair business of it,” replied his father; “but he is a contractor, and employs a good many hands. I was speaking of the hired men, not of those who manage the business.”
“Is Mr. Jones a contractor?”
“No, he works by the month, and hard work he finds it, too, I fear.”
“Then why does he follow it?”
“Because he is obliged to. He has a family to support, and this is the only way by which he can provide for them. Should you like to know how it happened that he cannot make money by an easier and pleasanter method?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Clinton.
“When he and I were boys together,” continued Mr. Davenport, “his father was rich, but mine was poor. When I was nine years old, I was taken from school, and put out to work; but Henry Jones was not only kept at school, for many years after, but was not required to do any work, even in his leisure hours. He was well dressed, and had everything he wanted, and I can remember to this day how I used to envy him. I could not go to school even in winter, but had to work constantly, and earn my own living. When I was about fourteen years old, I engaged myself as an apprentice to a carpenter. I liked the work, and soon made pretty good progress. As I had the long winter evenings to myself, it occurred to me that I might make up for my lack of school privileges, by an improvement of those leisure hours. So I got some school books, and set myself to studying. Soon after I reached my sixteenth year, I offered myself as a candidate for schoolmaster in our town, and was accepted, for the winter term, my master having agreed to release me for three months, as he usually had little business during that portion of the year. And I, the poor self-taught boy, was not only a school teacher, but Henry Jones, whose privileges I had so often envied, was one of my scholars! A very dull scholar he was, too, for he did not take the slightest interest in his studies. Before I had finished my term, he left school, against the wishes of his parents, having been fairly shamed out of it. He remained about home several months, doing nothing, until his father secured a situation for him in a merchant’s store in Portland; but when he made his appearance in the counting-room, the merchant found him so deficient in penmanship and arithmetic, that, after a week’s trial, he sent Henry back to his father, with the message that he would not answer. His failure discouraged him from attempting to do anything more. Instead of remedying the defects in his education, he refused to go to school any more, but spent his time principally in lounging about his father’s place of business, and in sauntering around the town. He was a perfect idler, and as his father continued to support and clothe him, he took no more thought for the morrow, than the pigs in our sty do, and I doubt whether he was half so valuable to the world as they are.