[Top]CHAPTERXXVI.THE END OF THE FIRST SCHOOL-DAY AT BEECH HILL.The next operation for the class was to round off the ends of the shelves. Mr. Brookbine asked the boys how they would do it. One said he would plane it off, another would saw it off, and a third would chop it off with the hatchet.“There are three ways, neither of which is practicable,” continued the carpenter. “You can’t plane off a circular face, and the saw or the hatchet would leave the work in a rough state. We will use all three of the methods named. First we will saw off the corner; then we will cut away a little more with the hatchet or shave; and finally we will plane it off smoothly, though we shall not use a plane, but another tool for the purpose. Mark off the part you will saw from the board, and saw it off.”This was done without any aid from the teacher.Then shingling-hatchets were used to take off the two corners left by the saw.“Now we will introduce you to the spokeshave, an exceedingly useful tool for many purposes. It does the same work as a plane, and in the same manner; but as it has no appreciable length, compared with a plane, we can follow curves with it. Put the corner of the board in the vise, and then with the spokeshave work down to the circular line. Don’t cut the mark off; never do that. It will take you some time to do this job.”Mr. Brookbine showed the workmen how to use the new tool; and they went to work with it in earnest, being greatly interested in their occupation. While they were thus engaged, the carpenter went to the door to ascertain the state of things at the tree where one of the class was taking a vacation. Tom lay at the foot of the tree, and Dick Short was seated on a limb twenty feet from the ground. If the prisoner moved, the dog looked up at him; and Dick could think of no strategy by which he could outwit the faithful sentinel. The instructor only looked, and then returned to the bench. Dick was likely to stay where he was until theSt.Bernard changed his quarters.“Use the try-square when you get near the mark,” said the carpenter, as he resumed his place. “Every part of the quarter circle must be true.”One after another the students carried the shelf to Mr. Brookbine, as they finished it. Some criticisms were made on the work, and some of it had to be corrected. In due time they were all completed and approved. The sides of the shelves were just as they came from the planing-machine; and the boys were directed to lay them on the bench, and use the smoothing-plane upon them. These planes were adjusted so they cut the thinnest possible shaving. The shelves were made as smooth as glass.“I don’t see how we are to put the shelves up,” said Ben Ludlow when the boards were finished.“That is just the river we are to cross next,” replied Mr. Brookbine. “I believe we have no iron brackets, though I dare say the machinists at the other end of the shop could make them for us if we are willing to wait for them. For the want of them we will make a couple of ogee brackets of pine for each shelf.”“Ogee!” exclaimed Steve Baxter. “Is that Latin?”“It may be: I don’t know. My Greek and Latin were neglected. The ogee form is very common, and there is an ogee arch in architecture.—We need a blackboard in the shop as well as in the schoolroom,” said the carpenter, turning to Captain Gildrock. “But I can chalk it out on one of these box-tops.”He made a drawing of half a square, connecting the ends of the two sides by a diagonal. In other words, it was a right-angled triangle, resting on one of the points, with the side perpendicular to the top.“This is the shape of the board we shall get out. I divide the diagonal into two equal lengths. Each half will be the chord of the arc of a circle. The upper arc is outside of the chord, and the lower one inside of the chord;” and Mr. Brookbine drew the arcs with his chalk.“But you can’t get that figure out of that piece of board,” interposed Thad, who was thinking with all his might.“Very true, my lad; and I am glad to see that you have your eyes open. I want you to correctall my blunders. In order to get the ogee out of this piece of wood, I must draw a line parallel to the diagonal, far enough inside of it to permit me to get the arc out of the piece.”“Isn’t there any other way to do it?” asked Dory.“There is another way, and perhaps it is a better one,” replied Mr. Brookbine, as he drew another square on the board. “On the diagonal I draw the two arcs” (suiting the action to the words). “With a keyhole-saw, I follow this curved line, and cut the board in two pieces. Perhaps this will be the better way to do it, as it will give a little different practice.”“That is the way I was thinking of,” added Dory.“I am glad you thought of it. You and Thad may go to the lumber-room, and get the board to make these brackets of. We want six pairs of them, and we are to get out six pieces six inches square.”The boys soon returned with a board about twenty inches long and a little over a foot wide. It was sawed into six pieces, planed and squared to the exact size required. While the boys werethus employed, the carpenter made a pattern of a single bracket out of a piece of quarter-inch board. As soon as one of the square boards was ready, he applied the pattern to it, and marked the ogee line with a sharp-pointed pencil.The instructor then distributed the keyhole-saws, and explained how to use them. The square boards were put into the vises, after they had been marked from the pattern. The saws were narrowest near the points. If the pupils found any difficulty in turning the saw, they were required to take short strokes, using the tip end, until they got over the difficulty. The narrower the saw, the more easily it could be turned from a straight line.“Turn the bottom piece up-side-down, and it will exactly correspond with the upper piece, if you have sawed all the way on the line,” said the carpenter, when some of the boys had finished the first piece.“Mine don’t,” added Lick Milton. “I kept close to the line all the way.”“Another blunder of mine!” exclaimed Mr. Brookbine, “for which I tender my apology. I told you to saw on the right of the mark. Thisis always to be done when practicable; but I neglected to say that it is not always convenient, or even possible, to do it in that way. In this instance the line ought to have been sawed out, and then the cut would have been precisely in the middle of the piece. Sometimes, too, when you cannot shift the work end to end, it becomes necessary to saw on the left of the line. In cutting the next one, saw out the line, and see how it comes out then.”The result verified the statement of the teacher, for the two pieces almost coincided. The workmen were directed to apply the spokeshave to the curves on the bracket, and they were soon ready.“Now we will proceed to put the shelves up,” continued Mr. Brookbine.“Not this afternoon,” interposed Captain Gildrock. “It is four o’clock now, and we must be as punctual in closing the sessions of the school as in beginning them. I must say, my lads, that I have been very much pleased with your attention and general good conduct on the first day of the Beech-Hill Industrial School.”“For one, I should like to go on with the work until supper-time,” said Ben Ludlow.“So would I!” shouted about all the rest of them.“I think not, boys,” replied the captain. “I am glad to find you so much interested in your work, but we must not overdo it. We shall keep to our regular hours. The rest of the day, and the morning until nine o’clock, belongs to you; but you must not forget the lessons assigned to you for to-morrow. You may use the boats for a couple of hours now, if you choose. There are enough of the small craft to accommodate the whole school.”The boys put on their coats, and left the shop. Some of them were curious to know what had become of Dick Short, and they walked to the maple-tree. But Mr. Brookbine ordered them off, saying that they were to have no communication with Dick. Tom still kept his position at the foot of the tree.“Mr. Brookbine,” called Dick, when he saw the instructor come out of the shop.“Well, my lad, what is it?” asked the carpenter. “Do you want to jump on another board, and kill a couple more boys?”“I haven’t killed any boys,” replied Dick.“If you haven’t, it isn’t your fault. You went to work in the right way to do it, or, at least, to hurt them badly. What do you want now?”“Don’t you think I have been up this tree about long enough, Mr. Brookbine?” continued Dick in the meekest of tones.“I don’t know: you know better than I do. If you haven’t been up there long enough to keep you from skylarking in school-hours, you had better stay there a week or two longer; and Tom will see that you don’t come down.”“I will be as sober as a judge in school-hours after this. I didn’t think what I was about when I jumped on that board, and I am sorry I did it,” pleaded Dick, who was heartily disgusted with being watched by the big dog.“Very well: I am satisfied; but I don’t know whether Phil Gawner is, or not,” added the instructor.“I will beg his pardon, or let him thrash me, just as he chooses,” suggested Dick.The instructor called Phil as he was going down to the lake. As soon as Phil came within hailing-distance of the tree, Dick made his apology, which was promptly accepted; and the culprit waspermitted to descend the tree. His punishment was so odd that it puzzled him. He had often been whipped in school for his pranks; but to be imprisoned over two hours up in a tree, with a dog to keep guard over him, was more than he could stand.Most of the students were at the lake by this time. Dory had already invited Oscar Chester to take a sail in the Goldwing, and he had accepted. The four members of the Goldwing Club had been in the schooner so much that they preferred to take a four-oar boat that was moored on the lake.In fifteen minutes the Goldwing was out on Lake Champlain. The wind was fresh from the south-west, and the lake is not the best place in the world for a sailboat. Puffs of wind, and even pretty smart squalls, sometimes come from the hills that surround this beautiful sheet of water, so that the skipper has to be on the alert.“I should be very glad to have you steer her now, Oscar, if you wish,” said Dory to his passenger as soon as the boat was well out in the lake.“Thank you, Dory,” replied Oscar. “I think we shall be the best of friends, after all.”“It will not be my fault if we are not,” added Dory.Just then the Monkey, which Sim Green had brought up from Burlington on Saturday, came out off the river in charge of Bolingbroke Millweed.
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The next operation for the class was to round off the ends of the shelves. Mr. Brookbine asked the boys how they would do it. One said he would plane it off, another would saw it off, and a third would chop it off with the hatchet.
“There are three ways, neither of which is practicable,” continued the carpenter. “You can’t plane off a circular face, and the saw or the hatchet would leave the work in a rough state. We will use all three of the methods named. First we will saw off the corner; then we will cut away a little more with the hatchet or shave; and finally we will plane it off smoothly, though we shall not use a plane, but another tool for the purpose. Mark off the part you will saw from the board, and saw it off.”
This was done without any aid from the teacher.Then shingling-hatchets were used to take off the two corners left by the saw.
“Now we will introduce you to the spokeshave, an exceedingly useful tool for many purposes. It does the same work as a plane, and in the same manner; but as it has no appreciable length, compared with a plane, we can follow curves with it. Put the corner of the board in the vise, and then with the spokeshave work down to the circular line. Don’t cut the mark off; never do that. It will take you some time to do this job.”
Mr. Brookbine showed the workmen how to use the new tool; and they went to work with it in earnest, being greatly interested in their occupation. While they were thus engaged, the carpenter went to the door to ascertain the state of things at the tree where one of the class was taking a vacation. Tom lay at the foot of the tree, and Dick Short was seated on a limb twenty feet from the ground. If the prisoner moved, the dog looked up at him; and Dick could think of no strategy by which he could outwit the faithful sentinel. The instructor only looked, and then returned to the bench. Dick was likely to stay where he was until theSt.Bernard changed his quarters.
“Use the try-square when you get near the mark,” said the carpenter, as he resumed his place. “Every part of the quarter circle must be true.”
One after another the students carried the shelf to Mr. Brookbine, as they finished it. Some criticisms were made on the work, and some of it had to be corrected. In due time they were all completed and approved. The sides of the shelves were just as they came from the planing-machine; and the boys were directed to lay them on the bench, and use the smoothing-plane upon them. These planes were adjusted so they cut the thinnest possible shaving. The shelves were made as smooth as glass.
“I don’t see how we are to put the shelves up,” said Ben Ludlow when the boards were finished.
“That is just the river we are to cross next,” replied Mr. Brookbine. “I believe we have no iron brackets, though I dare say the machinists at the other end of the shop could make them for us if we are willing to wait for them. For the want of them we will make a couple of ogee brackets of pine for each shelf.”
“Ogee!” exclaimed Steve Baxter. “Is that Latin?”
“It may be: I don’t know. My Greek and Latin were neglected. The ogee form is very common, and there is an ogee arch in architecture.—We need a blackboard in the shop as well as in the schoolroom,” said the carpenter, turning to Captain Gildrock. “But I can chalk it out on one of these box-tops.”
He made a drawing of half a square, connecting the ends of the two sides by a diagonal. In other words, it was a right-angled triangle, resting on one of the points, with the side perpendicular to the top.
“This is the shape of the board we shall get out. I divide the diagonal into two equal lengths. Each half will be the chord of the arc of a circle. The upper arc is outside of the chord, and the lower one inside of the chord;” and Mr. Brookbine drew the arcs with his chalk.
“But you can’t get that figure out of that piece of board,” interposed Thad, who was thinking with all his might.
“Very true, my lad; and I am glad to see that you have your eyes open. I want you to correctall my blunders. In order to get the ogee out of this piece of wood, I must draw a line parallel to the diagonal, far enough inside of it to permit me to get the arc out of the piece.”
“Isn’t there any other way to do it?” asked Dory.
“There is another way, and perhaps it is a better one,” replied Mr. Brookbine, as he drew another square on the board. “On the diagonal I draw the two arcs” (suiting the action to the words). “With a keyhole-saw, I follow this curved line, and cut the board in two pieces. Perhaps this will be the better way to do it, as it will give a little different practice.”
“That is the way I was thinking of,” added Dory.
“I am glad you thought of it. You and Thad may go to the lumber-room, and get the board to make these brackets of. We want six pairs of them, and we are to get out six pieces six inches square.”
The boys soon returned with a board about twenty inches long and a little over a foot wide. It was sawed into six pieces, planed and squared to the exact size required. While the boys werethus employed, the carpenter made a pattern of a single bracket out of a piece of quarter-inch board. As soon as one of the square boards was ready, he applied the pattern to it, and marked the ogee line with a sharp-pointed pencil.
The instructor then distributed the keyhole-saws, and explained how to use them. The square boards were put into the vises, after they had been marked from the pattern. The saws were narrowest near the points. If the pupils found any difficulty in turning the saw, they were required to take short strokes, using the tip end, until they got over the difficulty. The narrower the saw, the more easily it could be turned from a straight line.
“Turn the bottom piece up-side-down, and it will exactly correspond with the upper piece, if you have sawed all the way on the line,” said the carpenter, when some of the boys had finished the first piece.
“Mine don’t,” added Lick Milton. “I kept close to the line all the way.”
“Another blunder of mine!” exclaimed Mr. Brookbine, “for which I tender my apology. I told you to saw on the right of the mark. Thisis always to be done when practicable; but I neglected to say that it is not always convenient, or even possible, to do it in that way. In this instance the line ought to have been sawed out, and then the cut would have been precisely in the middle of the piece. Sometimes, too, when you cannot shift the work end to end, it becomes necessary to saw on the left of the line. In cutting the next one, saw out the line, and see how it comes out then.”
The result verified the statement of the teacher, for the two pieces almost coincided. The workmen were directed to apply the spokeshave to the curves on the bracket, and they were soon ready.
“Now we will proceed to put the shelves up,” continued Mr. Brookbine.
“Not this afternoon,” interposed Captain Gildrock. “It is four o’clock now, and we must be as punctual in closing the sessions of the school as in beginning them. I must say, my lads, that I have been very much pleased with your attention and general good conduct on the first day of the Beech-Hill Industrial School.”
“For one, I should like to go on with the work until supper-time,” said Ben Ludlow.
“So would I!” shouted about all the rest of them.
“I think not, boys,” replied the captain. “I am glad to find you so much interested in your work, but we must not overdo it. We shall keep to our regular hours. The rest of the day, and the morning until nine o’clock, belongs to you; but you must not forget the lessons assigned to you for to-morrow. You may use the boats for a couple of hours now, if you choose. There are enough of the small craft to accommodate the whole school.”
The boys put on their coats, and left the shop. Some of them were curious to know what had become of Dick Short, and they walked to the maple-tree. But Mr. Brookbine ordered them off, saying that they were to have no communication with Dick. Tom still kept his position at the foot of the tree.
“Mr. Brookbine,” called Dick, when he saw the instructor come out of the shop.
“Well, my lad, what is it?” asked the carpenter. “Do you want to jump on another board, and kill a couple more boys?”
“I haven’t killed any boys,” replied Dick.
“If you haven’t, it isn’t your fault. You went to work in the right way to do it, or, at least, to hurt them badly. What do you want now?”
“Don’t you think I have been up this tree about long enough, Mr. Brookbine?” continued Dick in the meekest of tones.
“I don’t know: you know better than I do. If you haven’t been up there long enough to keep you from skylarking in school-hours, you had better stay there a week or two longer; and Tom will see that you don’t come down.”
“I will be as sober as a judge in school-hours after this. I didn’t think what I was about when I jumped on that board, and I am sorry I did it,” pleaded Dick, who was heartily disgusted with being watched by the big dog.
“Very well: I am satisfied; but I don’t know whether Phil Gawner is, or not,” added the instructor.
“I will beg his pardon, or let him thrash me, just as he chooses,” suggested Dick.
The instructor called Phil as he was going down to the lake. As soon as Phil came within hailing-distance of the tree, Dick made his apology, which was promptly accepted; and the culprit waspermitted to descend the tree. His punishment was so odd that it puzzled him. He had often been whipped in school for his pranks; but to be imprisoned over two hours up in a tree, with a dog to keep guard over him, was more than he could stand.
Most of the students were at the lake by this time. Dory had already invited Oscar Chester to take a sail in the Goldwing, and he had accepted. The four members of the Goldwing Club had been in the schooner so much that they preferred to take a four-oar boat that was moored on the lake.
In fifteen minutes the Goldwing was out on Lake Champlain. The wind was fresh from the south-west, and the lake is not the best place in the world for a sailboat. Puffs of wind, and even pretty smart squalls, sometimes come from the hills that surround this beautiful sheet of water, so that the skipper has to be on the alert.
“I should be very glad to have you steer her now, Oscar, if you wish,” said Dory to his passenger as soon as the boat was well out in the lake.
“Thank you, Dory,” replied Oscar. “I think we shall be the best of friends, after all.”
“It will not be my fault if we are not,” added Dory.
Just then the Monkey, which Sim Green had brought up from Burlington on Saturday, came out off the river in charge of Bolingbroke Millweed.