We made the ladder out of a couple of pieces of scantling and parts of an old packing-case. We planed and fitted and nailed it, till it was goodly to the eye and fairly sound to the feel. Then we painted it an art-green, and put nice round knobs of leather on the ends that leaned against the wall. It was really an ornament, the sort of thing that people years ago used to gild and hang up with pink ribbons. But unfortunately it was not a very reliable ladder. It would do everything but ladd, so to speak.
Uncle Aleck was in the house one day, and having nothing particular to do formed an evil desire for a book on the top shelf. This particular uncle, be it understood, is regarded as a wealthy old bachelor—though personally we can't be sure to what extent he is either single or rich. Anyhow, he always professed a special affection for us personally, on the curious ground that we were the image of himself at our age—a reflection which furnished us no pleasure from the point of view of physical pulchritude, however flattering it might be as a financial prospect. We were regarded by the family generally as his heir—alas, that we should have to say we "were" regarded.
Naturally Uncle, seeing this book which he shouldn't have wanted to read—at his age, too, the old rascal!—seized that infernal ladder and climbed up. It let him get right up to the top rung, and then it bucked or shied or kicked or something equally effective. When they got the splints off Uncle's leg and he was able to move around on crutches, he sent for his lawyer. Ever since he has regarded us with ill-concealed dislike. Whenever we see a short ladder from that fateful day to this we get a curious "gone" feeling under the middle button of our vest.
This is the sort of luck we have had with tools, but, of course, there are people who have had worse. We have a friend, for instance, who is an absolute victim to them. He has a fine home and a charming wife, not to mention the dog. But he is gradually undermining his health and wrecking his own happiness and theirs by his insane conviction that he is a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, a cabinet-maker, a plasterer, and a stone-mason combined. There are three or four other trades as well, but these will do to go on with.
When he built his house, he had a large room constructed down in the basement adjoining the boudoir occupied by the furnace and the coal-bin. It is a really beautiful room, a little low as to the ceiling, perhaps, and a little dim as to the light. But there is a fine cement floor, fine big beams in the ceiling, and splendid brick walls in all their natural beauty of cool grey. It is his workshop. He tries to persuade his wife that some day it will be the billiard-room. But she, poor woman, knows better. It is his workshop now and forever, till his last tool is rusted and his last finger busted and—well, there are "dusted" and "crusted" left to rhyme with.
He has that place simply jammed with tools of all sorts and work-benches and the like. He keeps a regular harem of hammers and hatchets and saws cooped up down there, each in her own little cubicle. Not even the Sultan himself in all his matrimonial glory was ever half so jealous of his better halves—perhaps one should say, his better ninety-nine one-hundredths—as our friend is of these same tools. Why, if he were to catch anyone cutting with a chisel of his, or planing with a plane from his seraglio, he would be liable to bowstring the poor tools and throw them into the Bosphorus, as represented by the sewer or a neighbor's backyard or some similar abyss of oblivion.
Sunday afternoons and any evening when his wife has company, he disappears down into this den of hardware, and the noise of hammering and sawing which emerges from it—the place sounds like a busy shipyard on the Clyde—indicates that he is having much joy of his chilled-steel darlings. Every now and then he comes up to have a piece of court-plaster put on a new place during the temporary absence of cuticle. Then he goes back with the solemn and determined expression of a man who at great personal sacrifice is accomplishing a sacred duty.
What does he do down there? Generally speaking, Heaven only knows. We have heard him talk in vague terms of the new set of storm-windows and storm-doors he is making for the house. But that was over two years ago, and there have been some very tidy little storms since then. But never yet have we seen sash or panel of those doors and windows.
It is true he did make a set of window-boxes for the flowers in the sun-room—so-called because you can sit in there and look at the sunlight outside. But even a union carpenter could have made those boxes in half an hour, and members of the union have never been accused of undue and ill-considered haste in such matters.
It is when our friend comes up out of the cave, however, to do a job in the upper regions of the house that things really happen. There was a tap in the bath-room, rather a nice tap as taps go—a very handsome tap, in fact. But, in the case of taps, handsome is as handsome pours. And pouring was one thing this particular tap refused to do—thought it vulgar, perhaps. So our friend one bright Sunday afternoon—these things seem always to happen on Sunday—got an idea in his mind and a big monkey-wrench in his hand, and went up to the bath-room and took a half-nelson on the handle of that tap. He gave one twist—just one. It was all that was needed. The tap came away with a jerk, and a solid jet of water as thick as your wrist took him in the face.