Handy

“ When the veteran made his reappearance on the Rialto he looked as if he might be at peace with all mankind. He had nothing worse than a smile, even for his enemies. But then his enemies were few. His proverbial good humor and honesty of purpose disarmed the envious. The influence of kindly smiles and generous impulses go further in this matter-of-fact world than many people are willing to acknowledge. A cheerful and encouraging word frequently helps in the accomplishment of a task which without its influence might fall flat. Handy's dominant quality was his uniform good nature. ”

“ While Pulz read, Handy Solomon worked on the alteration of his claw. He could never get it to hold, and I remember as an undertone to Pulz's reading, the rumble of strange, exasperated oaths. Whatever the evening's lecture, it always ended with the book on alchemy. These men had no perspective by which to judge such things. ”

“ From the cabin came the sound of a sharp fall, then a man cried out, and on the heels of it Pulz darted from the cabin, screaming horribly. We were all on deck, and as the little man rushed toward the stern Handy Solomon twisted him deftly from his feet. ”

“ It was startling enough to scare the soul out of a man, but I held fast and was just about to step forward, when my collar was twisted tight from behind. I raised both hands, felt steel, and knew that I was in the grasp of Handy Solomon's claw. ”

“ Suddenly Handy Solomon put his head down, and with a roar distinctly audible even above the din that filled the cave, charged directly into the herd. I saw the beasts cringe before him; I saw his club rising and falling indiscriminately; and then the whole back of the cave seemed to rise and come at us.
This was no chance of sport now, but a struggle for very life. We realised that once down there would be no hope, for while the seals were more anxious to escape than to fight, we knew that their jaws were powerful. ”

“ Generally I lay across my bunk smoking my pipe while Handy Solomon held forth, his speech punctuated by surly speculations from the Nigger, with hesitating deep-sea wisdom from the hairy Thrackles, or with voluminous bursts of fractured English from Perdosa. Pulz had nothing to offer, but watched from his pale green eyes. The light shifted and wavered from one to the other as the ship swayed: garments swung; the empty berths yawned cavernous. I could imagine the forecastle filled with the desperate men who had beaten off the Oyama. ”

“ Only Handy Solomon clung desperately to the wheel, jamming his weight to port in the hope she might pay up: Thrackles, too, his eye squinted along some bearing of his own, was waiting for her to drag. Presently it became evident that she was doing so, whereupon he drew his knife across our hawser.
"My God," chattered Pulz at my ear. "If we go ashore——"
He did not need to finish. Unless the Laughing Lass could recover before the squall had driven her to leeward a scant half mile, we should be cooked alive in the boiling cauldron at the shore's edge. ”

“ Crumple sighed again;—he had learned the impotency of worldly wealth, and would have been satisfied, if left untempted, to have remained happy with one and sixpence a day.
"Come, Skulpit," repeated Handy, getting impatient, "you're not going to go along with old Bunce in helping that parson to rob us all. Take the pen, man, and right yourself. Well," he added, seeing that Skulpit still doubted, "to see a man as is afraid to stand by hisself is, to my thinking, the meanest thing as is." ”

“ The man's teeth bared like an animal's, but Darrow went on easily as though unconscious of giving offence. "If I were you, I'd have it arranged so the hook would turn backward as well as forward. It would be handier for some things,—fighting, for instance."
He passed on down the companion. Handy Solomon glared after him, then down at his hook. He bent his arm this way and that, drawing the hook toward him softly, as a cat does her claws. His eyes cleared and a look of admiration crept into them. ”

“ No one paid any attention to anyone else. Each discovered what I could have told them, that even the human figure at five hundred yards is a small mark for a strange rifle. The constant correction of elevation, however, brought the puffs of dust always closer, and I could not but realise that the doctrine of chances must bring home some of the bullets. I soon discovered by way of comfort that only Thrackles and Handy Solomon really understood firearms; and of those two Thrackles alone had had much experience at long range. ”

“ Why should they desire to do so? I had to give it up, but the fact itself was obvious enough. I laughed to see them. The affair did not come to blows, but it did come to black looks on meeting, muttered oaths, growls of enmity every time they happened to pass each other on the deck. Perdosa was not so bad; his Mexican blood inclined him to the histrionic, and his Mexican cast lent itself well to evil looks. But Handy Solomon, for the first time in my acquaintance with him, was ridiculous. ”

“ Logically Captain Selover and I should have passed most of our evenings together. As a matter of fact we so spent very few. Early in the dusk the captain invariably rowed himself out to his beloved schooner. What he did there I do not know. We could see his light now in one part of her, now in the other. The men claimed he was scrubbing her teeth. "Old Scrubs" they called him to his back: never Captain Selover.
"He has to clean up after his own feet, he's so dirty," sagely proffered Handy Solomon. ”

“ Lord of the Isles is chiefly interesting as the first instance of the introduction into the blood of the Londonderry sires of the cross of Prince of Thule, which has already been referred to. His dam Handy was a daughter of Prince of Thule; and it may perhaps have been from this source that his reduced size came, for Prince of Thule was himself only 36 inches high. It is significant, too, that Multum in Parvo, a brown horse 37 inches high, sired by Lord of the Isles out of his own dam Dandy, is described by those who knew [58] Prince of Thule well as being exceedingly like him. ”

“ Some way or other we must invent a way to get Hayden and get him out of there. It’s a man’s-size job, all right, but we’ve got to figure on a little luck and then taking advantage of it.
“You men are recommended as flyers, and also as men who’ve had some diversified experience. This is not flattery, it is a statement of facts. I expect that you can handle yourselves in any company, and that you’ll be able to come to bat in a pinch when we get up there. ”

“ I should think that our friend, the professor, here, would hardly like that notion of yours, that business, as business, has nothing to do with the education of a gentleman. If this is a business man's country, and if the professor has nothing in stock but the sort of education that business has no use for, I should suppose that he would want to go into some other line. ”

“ But though they should be so, they are not sufficient for our purpose, without a good share of learning; for which I could again cite the authority of Horace, and of many others, if any was necessary to prove that tools are of no service to a workman, when they are not sharpened by art, or when he wants rules to direct him in his work, or hath no matter to work upon. All these uses are supplied by learning; for nature can only furnish us with capacity; or, as I have chose to illustrate it, with the tools of our profession ”

“ Solved a problem that has eluded men of genius for centuries, and you're worried about one minor detail!"
"Well, it ain't whut you might call minor, Jim—"
"Hank, you never had a day's mechanical training in your life. I know that. So tell me—how on earth could you know how to make this machine?" ”

“ The carpenter or machinist must have a place for each tool, and always put it there when he is through using it. The merchant must have a definite book and page or drawer or pigeon-hole for every item which he records. The scholar must have a set of cards or envelopes or drawers or pockets alphabetically arranged in which he keeps each class of facts where he can turn to it instantly. This keeping things of a kind together, each kind in a place by itself, is [66] system. Without system nothing can be managed well, and no great enterprise can be carried on at all. ”

“ The graduate of the carpenter's shop knows how to use his tools—or used to in days before superficial training in trades became the rule. Does the college graduate know how to use his tools? Or has he to set about fitting himself for some employment, and gaining that culture, that training of himself, that utilization of his information which will make him necessary in the world? There has been a great deal of discussion whether a boy should be trained in the classics or mathematics or sciences or modern languages. ”

“ If we enter the workshop of the rudest mechanic, he gives us to understand that that is his peculiar province; he prides himself upon the possession of the knowledge and skill which belong exclusively to his kind of business, and he tacitly asks to be respected in his own vocation. ”

“ I am not a professor of sleight-of-hand, but only perform a few tricks I show to amateurs. These lessons, you can understand, would not suffice for my livelihood, and I will tell you, then,” he added, emptying his glass again, and holding it out to be filled, as if he wished me to pay for his confidence, “I visit in the evening houses where I have managed to gain an introduction, and profit by some of the principles I have just shown you.”
“I suppose you give a performance?” ”

“ I am not a manual labourer and please God I never shall be one, but there are some kinds of manual work that I could do if I had to. At a pinch I could be a tolerable road-sweeper or an inefficient gardener or even a tenth-rate farm hand. ”

“ And the earlier the period of life at which the handicraftsman has to enter into actual practice of his craft, the more important is it that he should devote the precious hours of preliminary education to things of the mind, which have no direct and immediate bearing on his branch of industry, though they lie at the foundation of all realities. ”

“ In reply to an application from the agent at Harwich, in the matter of finding employment for a relative, Whitley writes:—"By yours of the 13th, I understand that a relative of yours will be in London this summer, with a design to get some employment, wherein I should think myself happy could I be serviceable to him; but the world is so altered of late to the disadvantage of young gentlemen in [Pg 344] point of education, that there is little encouragement to be had. ”

“ While the other boys would stand in the presence of the huge Titan of the shop lost in the wonder of ignorance, the manual training boy would gaze with delight on the marvel of mechanism, wrapped in the admiration begotten of a thorough understanding of its construction, and strong in the consciousness of his mastery of it. ”

“ For the hand stands for use, for service, and for unyielding integrity; and it may be confidently asserted on the conviction of observation, experience, and a studious consideration of historic facts, that its drill and discipline as enforced in the world’s workshops, and in the best of existing Manual-training schools, results in a far greater degree of mind development than is produced by any exclusively academic course, and hence that Manual Training is the most important of all methods of education. ”

“ When it shall have been demonstrated that the highest degree of education results from combining manual with intellectual training, the laborer will feel the pride of a genuine triumph; for the consciousness that every thought-impelled blow educates him, and so raises him in the scale of manhood, will nerve his arm, and fire his brain with hope and courage. ”

“ But you shall not, in the meantime, go to the wall for want of advice. Rely upon it, we'll do the best we can for you,' he continued, in a patronising way, with his chin raised, and extending his hand kindly to shake that of the parson. 'Yes, I certainly will—you must have advice. ”

“ Most of the mediums work in the dark and many of them have employed expert pickpockets who cleverly take from the sitters’ pockets letters, names, memorandums, etc., while they are being interviewed. These are passed to the medium who tells the sitter more or less of their contents. Having served their purpose they are returned to the pockets of the sitter who, none the wiser, goes out to help spread reports of the medium’s wonderful ability. Mediums’ campaigns are planned a long time ahead. ”

“ I have no sympathy with a gentleman who imagines that manual labour is compatible with his position, provided that he does not put his hand to the plough in England. Is not there something in the Scriptures about a man putting his hand to the plough and looking back? ”

“ Gonta get a job? It's too far away from everything for you to go and come to a job, Mr. Drew."
"I'll tell you," said Oliver. "At the University I took an agricultural course. Since my graduation I have written not a few articles and sold them to leading farm journals. If the Old Tabor Ivison Place is of any value at all, I want to experiment in raising all sorts of things on a small scale, and write articles about my results. I'll have a few stands of bees, and maybe a cow. I'll try all sorts of things, get a second-hand typewriter, and go to it. ”