The Story Of A Flutter-Wheel

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Title:     The Story Of A Flutter-Wheel
Author: Edward Eggleston [More Titles by Eggleston]

What queer places boys have of assembling. Sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. Hay-mows, river-banks, threshing-floors, these were the old places of resort for country boys. And nothing was so sweet to me, when I was a boy, as the newly cut clover-hay where I sat with two or three companions, watching the barn swallows chattering their incomprehensible gabble and gossip from the doors of their mud houses in the rafters. And what stories we told and what talks we had. In the city who does not remember the old-fashioned cellar-door, sloping down to the ground? These were always places of resort.

Tom Miller was the minister's son, and there was a party of boys who met regularly on Parson Miller's cellar-door. Mrs. Miller used herself to listen to the stories they told, as she sat by the window above them, though they were unconscious of her presence. They were boys full of life and ambition, but they were a good set of boys on the whole, and it was not till lessons were learned and work done that they met thus on the cellar-door. They belonged to the same class in school, and besides were "cronies" in all respects. There was Tom Miller, the minister's son, who intended to be a minister himself, and Jimmy Jackson, the shoemaker's boy, as full of fun and playfulness as a kitten, and poor Will Sampson, who stammered, and Harry Wilson, the son of a wealthy banker, and a brave boy too, and John Harlan, the widow's son, pale and slender, the pet of all, and great, stout Hans Schlegal, who bade fair to be a great scholar. These half dozen were nearly always on the cellar-door for half an hour on Friday evenings, when they happened to have a little more leisure than on other evenings.

"I say, boys," said Hans, "I've got an idea."

"How strange it must seem to you," said Tom Miller; whereupon they all laughed, good-natured Hans with the rest.

"Do let's hear it," said Harry; "there has not been an idea in this crowd for a month."

"Well," said Hans, "let's every fellow tell a story here on the cellar door, turn about, on Friday evenings."

"All except m-m-me," stammered Sampson, who was always laughing at his own defect; "I c-c-couldn't g-g-get through be-be-fore midnight."

"Well," said Miller, "we'll make Will Sampson chairman, to keep us in order."

They all agreed to this, and Sampson moved up to the top of the cellar-door and said: "G-g-gentlemen, th-th-this is th-th-the proudest m-m-moment of my life. I'm president of the C-c-cellar-d-d-door C-club! M-m-many thanks! Harry Wilson will tell the first st-st-story."

"Agreed!" said the boys. After thinking a minute, Harry began.

 

HARRY WILSON'S STORY.

I will tell you a story that my father told me. In a village in Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Schuylkill River, there lived a wealthy man.

"Once upon a time," said Jimmy Jackson.

"B-be st-still! Come to order th-th-there, Jackson," stammered the chairman, and the story went on.

Yes, once upon a time, there lived a wealthy man who had two sons. The father was very anxious to make great men of them, or at least, educated men. I think, or rather my father thinks, that their father used to dream that one of these boys would grow to be President, and that the other would be a member of Congress, at any rate. But while his younger son grew to be a good student, the other one was a good, honest, industrious, and intelligent boy, who did not much like books. His father intended to make him a lawyer, and he got on well enough in Arithmetic and Geography, but Grammar came hard, and when he got into Latin he blundered dreadfully. He studied to please his parents, and from a sense of duty, but it mortified him greatly to think that he could not succeed as the other boys did. For you know it is hard to succeed at anything unless your heart is in it. And so one night he sat down and cried to think he must always be a dolt. His mother found him weeping and tried to comfort him. She walked out in the dusky evening with him and talked. But poor David, for that was his name, was broken-hearted. He had tried with all his might to get interested in "Hic, haec, hoc," but it was of no use. He said there was something lacking in his head. "And I'll never amount to anything, never! Brother Joe gets his lesson in a few minutes, and I can't get mine at all."

His mother did not know what to say. But she only said that there was some use for everybody. She knew that David was not wanting in intelligence. In practical affairs he showed more shrewdness than his brother. But his father had set his heart on making him a scholar. That very day the teacher had said to his father that it was no use.

"Your father," she said, "intends to take you from school, and it is a great disappointment to him. But we know that you have done your best, and you must not be disheartened. If you were lazy, we should feel a great deal worse."

Just then they came to the orchard brook. Here she saw in the dim light something moving in the water.

"What is that, David?" she said.

"That's my flutter-wheel, and I feel like breaking it to pieces."

"Why?"

"Well, you see, all the boys made little water-mills to be run by the force of the stream. We call them 'flutter-wheels.' But I made one so curious that it beat them all," he said.

"Show it to me, Davie," she said. And David explained it to her, forgetting all about his unhappiness in the pleasure of showing the little cog-wheels, and the under-shot wheel that drove it.

"And why did you want to break it up?" she asked.

"Because, mother, Sam Peters said that I should never be good for anything but to make flutter-wheels, and it is true, I am afraid."

"If you were a poor man's son, Davie, you might be a good mechanic," said his mother.

That night Davie resolved to be a mechanic. "I won't be a good-for-nothing man in the world. If I can't be a learned professor, I may be a good carpenter or a blacksmith. If I learn to make a good horseshoe, I'll be worth something." So the next morning he asked his father's leave to enter a machine-shop. His father said he might, and with all the school-boys laughing at him, he took his tin-pail with his lunch in it, and went into the shop each morning. And now he began to love books, too. He gathered a library of works on mechanics. Everything relating to machinery he studied. He took up mathematics and succeeded. After a while he rose to a good position in the shop. And he became at last a great railroad engineer. He built that great bridge at Blankville.

"Why," said John Harlan, "I thought your Uncle David built that."

"So he did," said Harry. "My uncle was the boy that could not learn Latin."

"I suppose," said Tom Miller, "that God has use for us all, boys. Perhaps Jimmy's father was as much intended to make shoes as mine to preach. What a mistake it must be to get into the wrong place, though."

"Come, you're getting too awfully solemn, Tom," said Jimmy Jackson; "you'll put a fellow to sleep before he has time to go to bed." And Jackson pretended to snore.

"The m-m-meeting's adjourned," said the president. "Jimmy Jackson will be the sp-speaker at the n-next m-m-meeting of the Cellar-d-door S-society."

[The end]
Edward Eggleston's short story: The Story Of A Flutter-Wheel

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