is, his
son, who had inherited the talent, was also contraband. I can see
now the huge bulk of the elder Jarvis as he stood in the melting,
soot-powdered snow in front of his shop, and hear his comments on my
pertinacity.

"If you ever wants another man's missus when you grows up, my lad, Gawd
'elp 'im!"

"Why should I want another man's wife when I don't want one of my own?"
I demanded, indignant.

He laughed with his customary lack of moderation.

"You mind what old Jarvis says," he cried. "What you wants, you gets."

I did get his boards, by sheer insistence. No doubt they were not very
valuable, and without question he more than made up for them in my
mother's bill. I also got something else of equal value to me at the
moment,--the assistance of Grits, the contraband; daily, after school,
I smuggled him into the shed through the alley, acquiring likewise the
services of Tom Peters, which was more of a triumph than it would seem.
Tom always had to be "worked up" to participation in my ideas, but in
the end he almost invariably succumbed. The notion of building a boat in
the dead of winter, and so far from her native element, naturally struck
him at first as ridiculous. Where in Jehoshaphat was I going to sail it
if I ever got it made? He much preferred to throw snowballs at innocent
wagon drivers.

All that Tom saw, at first, was a dirty, coal-spattered shed with dim
recesses, for it was lighted on one side only, and its temperature was
somewhere below freezing. Surely he could not be blamed for a tempered
enthusiasm! But for me, all the dirt and cold and discomfort were
blotted out, and I beheld a gallant craft manned by sturdy seamen
forging her way across blue water in the South Seas. Treasure Island,
alas, was as yet unwritten; but among my father's books were two old
volumes in which I had hitherto taken no interest, with crude engravings
of palms and coral reefs, of naked savages and tropical mountains
covered with jungle, the adventures, in brief, of one Captain Cook. I
also discovered a book by a later traveller. Spurred on by a mysterious
motive power, and to the great neglect of the pons asinorum and the
staple products of the Southern States, I gathered an amazing amount of
information concerning a remote portion of the globe, of head-hunters
and poisoned stakes, of typhoons, of queer war-craft that crept up on
you while you were dismantling galleons, when desperate hand-to-hand
encounters ensued.