Boys
need not be kept back to the hand-craft of the knife. For in-doors there
are the type case and printing press, the paint box, the tool box, the
lathe; and for out doors, the trowel, the spade, the grafting knife. It
matters not how many of the minor arts the youth acquires. The more the
merrier. Let each one gain the most he can in all such ways; for arts
like these bring no harm in their train; quite otherwise, they lure good
fortune to their company.
Play, as well as work, may bring out hand-craft. The gun, the bat, the
rein, the rod, the oar, all manly sports, are good training for the
hand. Walking insures fresh air, but it does not train the body or mind
like games and sports which are played out of doors. A man of great fame
as an explorer and as a student of nature (he who discovered, in the
West, bones of horses with two, three, and four toes, and who found the
remains of birds with teeth) once told me that his success was largely
due to the sports of his youth. His boyish love of fishing gave him his
manly skill in exploration.
I speak as if hand-craft was to be learned by sport. So it may. It may
also be learned by labor. Day by day for weeks I have been watching from
my study window a stately inn rise from the cellar just across the road.
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