"No," replied Jonas, "that is not a good way. You ought to finish up
your apparatus all complete, before you try it at all. Then you will
take a great deal more pleasure in trying it. Besides, if you get to
work splitting up your wood, you will not want to leave it, and go to
making a new wedge then. Now is the time to do it."

Rollo felt very desirous to make his beetle first, so as "just to try it
a little," as he said. Still, he had so often found, when he had not
followed Jonas's advice, that he was sorry for it afterwards, that he
concluded to make another wedge now. He accordingly went to work again,
and having learned how to do it by his practice upon the first one, he
succeeded very easily, and finished it much quicker than he did before.

Then he went to work upon his beetle. He selected a round stick of wood,
of about the right size, and then examined it carefully to find the part
which was most uniform and regular in its shape; and he bored a hole for
the handle in the middle of this part. He made his handle of pine wood,
for this was much easier to cut, and Jonas told him he thought it would
do nearly as well. When the handle was finished, he drove it into the
hole, and then he sawed off the ends of the stick of wood at the right
distances from the hole. He first took pains to measure on each side, so
as to have the distances exactly the same.

When this was done, he had quite a pretty little mallet. That is, it was
made very much like a carpenter's mallet; still, as a mallet is made
chiefly for the purpose of driving a chisel, and this was, on the other
hand, only intended to be used for splitting wood with a wedge, Jonas
told him he thought it would be strictly proper to call it a _little
beetle_. He worked so slowly and carefully, however, in doing all this,
that the afternoon had entirely passed away when he got the beetle and
the wedges done; and just when he was thinking that he was ready to try
them, he saw Dorothy at the kitchen door, ringing the bell to call him
in to tea.

SPLITTING.

When play time came the next day, Rollo ran after Nathan to show him his
beetle and wedges, and to get him to go out and see him 'split' with
them. Nathan trotted along after him, very much pleased.

Rollo had his beetle in one hand, and his two wedges in the other, and,
as he walked along, he looked over his shoulder towards Nathan, who was
following him, and talked to him by the way, explaining to hi