ng
to assume, rudely, the outlines of an axe-handle. I had made a
prodigious pile of fine white shavings and I was tired, but quite
suddenly there came over me a sort of love for that length of wood. I
sprung it affectionately over my knee, I rubbed it up and down with my
hand, and then I set it in the corner behind the fireplace.

"After all," I said, for I had really been disturbed by Harriet's
remark--"after all, power over one thing gives us power over everything.
When you mend socks prospectively--into futurity--Harriet, that is an
evidence of true greatness."

"Sometimes I think it doesn't pay," remarked Harriet, though she was
plainly pleased.

"Pretty good socks," I said, "can be bought for fifteen cents a pair."

Harriet looked at me suspiciously, but I was as sober as the face of
nature.

For the next two or three evenings I let the axe-helve stand alone in
the corner. I hardly looked at it, though once in a while, when occupied
with some other work, I would remember, or rather half remember, that I
had a pleasure in store for the evening. The very thought of sharp tools
and something, to make with them acts upon the imagination with peculiar
zest. So we love to employ the keen edge of the mind upon a knotty and
difficult subject.

One evening the Scotch preacher came in. We love him very much, though
he sometimes makes us laugh--perhaps, in part, because he makes us
laugh. Externally he is a sort of human cocoanut, rough, brown, shaggy,
but within he has the true milk of human kindness. Some of his qualities
touch greatness. His youth was spent in stony places where strong winds
blew; the trees where he grew bore thorns; the soil where he dug was
full of roots. But the crop was human love. He possesses that quality,
unusual in one bred exclusively in the country, of magnanimity toward
the unlike. In the country we are tempted to throw stones at strange
hats! But to the Scotch preacher every man in one way seems transparent
to the soul. He sees the man himself, not his professions any more than
his clothes. And I never knew anyone who had such an abiding disbelief
in the wickedness of the human soul. Weakness he sees and comforts;
wickedness he cannot see.

When he came in I was busy whittling my axe-helve, it being my pleasure
at that moment to make long, thin, curly shavings so light that many of
them were caught on the hearth and bowled by the draught straight to
fiery destruction.

There is a no