And what was the result of all these various services so far as he was concerned personally? Did he get any special consideration because of them? Was he the favorite child of the family? Did anyone kill even a lean calf for him, or clothe him in a coat of many colors? Not that the rest of us ever noticed. About the only way we ever showed any gratitude or any acknowledgement of his skill and energy was by saving up jobs for him.
No matter what the emergency might be, no one else ever touched a hammer or a saw or a paint-brush for fear of breaking in on Frank's personal preserves and so hurting his feelings—at least, that is the way we put it. If ever he went out of town for a few days, he had to work nights and Sundays when he came back, so as to catch up with the chores and odd jobs. And because he had always done them he went on doing them. He might grouse about it, but you know how it is once you have established a family tradition. The laws of the Medes and Persians are nothing to it for permanence.
All this happened because he was handy with tools and fancied himself as an amateur mechanic. The boy was clever at it, too, but this is something one should never admit about one's self. If a job should turn up to be done around the place and you should be asked if you can do it, deny it utterly. Say you know not neither do you understand a darn thing about it. If they ask you again, deny it again. Then if one come up to you saying, lo, this is a handy man, curse and swear and say that the only nail thou canst hit with a hammer is that which groweth upon thy thumb. Even so wilt thou find peace.
You must be eternally watchful, if you would keep yourself clean from the taint of handiness. There is something balefully fascinating about tools. They are so shiny and efficient-looking, or so rusty and inefficient-looking, that one is tempted to try them in either case, just to see how they work. And they are always lying about within easy reach—except perchance when you want some particular tool very badly. Then, if so be you desire a tack-hammer, you will find many gimlets and screw-drivers and eke a saw or two. But aye verily we say unto you, you won't know where th'ell the tack-hammer is, but will be obliged to tack down that bit of linoleum with a sad-iron—perhaps that is what makes the irons so sad. If, on the other hand, thou shouldst require a gimlet in thy business, then surely will there be tack-hammers in every drawer, but the gimlets will have crawled off into a hole somewhere to play with the young rats.
Even young children are inoculated with the virus of handiness. Little boys at Christmas-time are presented by silly old uncles—generally uncles who do not have to live in the same house—with sets of little tools all nicely arranged in gaudy boxes. Then the little boys, having bright and enquiring minds, proceed to saw sections out of the piano-legs and drive nails into mother's Circassian-oak dresser. The result is usually much pain for the little boys, though not in the parts of their anatomy which they use for purposes of sawing and hammering.
When we were a little boy, we were even as other little boys in this respect, though much more beautiful and clever—we state this on the authority of our maiden aunts. Having been presented by some reckless relative with a set of tin tools, we went right out to the family shed and built a nice little house with a real fireplace in it made out of two or three half-sections of brick. Then we started a fire in it, and when it got going nicely, we ran off to tell some of the other boys in the block about it.
There could be no question about that fire. It wasn't a big fire as fires go nowadays, but it was a lively one. It took two hose-reels and a chemical engine half an hour to put it out. We don't know what grandfather told the insurance company, but even over the lapse of years we distinctly remember what he told us. You see it was grandfather's shed, and grandfather at that period of our life was acting towards us in loco parentis—certainly there can be no doubt about the amount of loco which he put into the role of parent on that particular occasion.
Our natural genius for mechanics was nipped in the bud by that unfortunate occurrence. Ever since we have struggled manfully and—with a few exceptions—successfully against any inclination to monkey with tools. Taps have wheezed and leaked in our presence for weeks on end, but we have carefully ignored them till such time as a plumber or brother Frank was around. Coal-bins have broken down, but never have we taken saw and hammer in hand to put them up again. We have sworn off tools.
It is true that we have sometimes been compelled to run a lawn-mower. But then a lawn-mower is not properly a tool. It is more in the nature of a plague, something like typhoid fever or Prohibition.
We have stated that there were two or three exceptions to our abstinence from tools. Alas, yes, we succumbed to temptation or pressing need, and the result was in each case deplorable. Worst of all was the little ladder we constructed so as to reach certain high book-shelves in the room which the family calls "the study"—probably because no one would dream of doing such a thing there. It was a pretty little ladder, a bit of work we were proud of. But it cost us an inheritance—not actual, you know, but prospective.