FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   >>  
desirous of making a favorable impression. It seems that when Galileo and Herschel were little tots I undertook to construct a playhouse for them in the back yard. This was at a time when I was exceptionally busied with my professional studies; Mars was rapidly approaching perihelion, and I had been commissioned by the Blue Island Society of the Arts and Sciences to prepare a chart of the bottle-neck seas. It would have been surprising indeed had I not been preoccupied--too absorbed in intellectual pursuits to cope successfully with any such worldly and prosaic thing as a playhouse in the back yard. Yet Alice insists that it is most amusing that I should have neglected to provide that structure with windows and a door, and that, as a natural consequence, I should have nailed myself up securely in that affair. On another occasion I painted myself gradually into a corner while attempting to paint the floor of the spare chamber. Alice reproached me bitterly for this; she said she supposed everybody knew that a floor should always be painted toward, and not away from the door. Alice seems never to consider that few other people are gifted with such intuitions as she has, but are compelled to drag along through life learning by experience. I do not wish to be understood as complaining or railing against fate because I am not skilled in mechanics; I recognize as a distinct boon the fact that I am awkward in the use of tools, and the further fact that I have no ambition in the direction of mechanical endeavor has doubtless saved me many a bruised thumb and a vast amount of hard labor. When I see my neighbors tinkering away at their storm windows and garbage boxes and grape vine trellises and dog kennels and window screens and front gates, I do not neglect to thank heaven that Alice has the best of reasons for not asking me to engage in similar odd jobs about our house. Still, I am sure that, if I ever do engage in any avocation, it will be that of nailing lath, an employment requiring an exercise of patience, of intelligence, and of skill to the highest degree. Until we bought the new place I had no idea that the expense of conducting an establishment of one's own was so large. It seems, however, that when one has once become a property-owner there is no end to the things one must have and cannot get along without. It is impossible to say how or where the venders of patent arrangements find out about you, but
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   >>  



Top keywords:

engage

 

painted

 

windows

 
playhouse
 
Galileo
 

neglect

 
heaven
 

kennels

 

window

 

screens


reasons
 

favorable

 

impression

 

similar

 

trellises

 
ambition
 

amount

 

bruised

 

mechanical

 
endeavor

doubtless

 
garbage
 

neighbors

 

tinkering

 

direction

 

things

 

property

 
arrangements
 

patent

 

venders


impossible

 

desirous

 

employment

 

making

 

requiring

 

exercise

 

patience

 

nailing

 

awkward

 

avocation


intelligence

 

expense

 

conducting

 

establishment

 

bought

 

highest

 
degree
 

recognize

 

professional

 

amusing