And Frank succeeded very well this time, and made a good seal, and showed it to his mother.
“Is not it a good seal, mamma?” said he.
“I took care not to hold the wax this time as I did the last, when I burned myself.”
“Yes,” said his mother, “I dare say you remember how you held it when you burned yourself.”
“O, yes, that I do, mamma; the pain makes me remember it, I believe.”
“And I dare say you remember how you held the wax, when you made this pretty seal.”
“O, yes, mamma, that I do; and I shall remember to do it the same way the next time.”
“You have been rewarded for your patience, by having succeeded in making this seal; and you were punished for your carelessness, by having burned your forefinger.”
Frank remembered that his father desired him not to talk to him about kites when he was busy; and though Frank was very eager to have a kite, he waited till he saw that his father was neither reading nor writing, nor talking to any body. Then he said, “Papa, I believe you are not busy now; will you give me a kite?” —
“I have not a kite ready made, in my house,” replied his father; “but I will show you how to make one; and I will give you some paper, and some paste, and some wood, to make it of.” Then his father gave him three large sheets of paper; and his mother rang the bell, and desired the servant would order the cook to make some paste.
And Frank asked his mother how the cook made paste, and what she would make it of.
His mother took him by the hand, and said, “You shall see;” and she took Frank down stairs with her, into the kitchen, where he had never been before; and she staid with him whilst he looked at the manner in which the cook made the paste.
“What is that white powder, mamma, which the cook is taking up in her hands?” said Frank.
“It is called flour, my dear. You may take some of it in your hand; and you may taste it.”
“What does it come from, mamma?”
“From corn, my dear. You have seen corn growing in the field; and when we walk out again into the field where there is corn, if you will put me in mind, I will show you the part of the plant from which flour is made.”
“Made, mamma! how is it made?”
“It is ground in a mill; but I cannot explain to you, now, what I mean by that. When you see a mill, you will know.”
“I should like to see a mill,” said Frank, “now, this minute.”
“But I cannot show it to you, Frank, now, this minute,” said his mother; “besides, you came here to see how paste was made; and you had better attend to that now.”
Frank attended; and he saw how paste was made. — And when the paste was made, it was left upon a plate to cool.
I Frank, as soon as it was cool enough to be used, took it to his father, and asked him if he might now begin to make his kite; but his father said, “My dear, I cannot find a slip of wood for you; and you cannot well make your kite without that; but I am going to the carpenter’s, and I can get such a bit as want from him. If you wish to come, you may come with me.”
Frank said that he should like to go to the carpenter’s; so his father took him along with him.
The carpenter lived in a village which was about a mile from Frank’s home; and the way to it was by the turnpike road.
As he walked along with his father, he saw some men who were lifting up a tree, which they had just cut down. It had been growing in a hedge by the road-side. The men put the tree upon a sort of carriage, and then they dragged the carriage along the road.
“What are they going to do with this tree, papa?” said Frank. “Will you ask them?”
The men said that they were carrying the tree to the saw-pit, to have it cut into boards.
They went on a little farther; and then the men turned up a lane, and dragged the carriage, with the tree upon it, after them; and Frank told his father that he should like very much to see the saw-pit.
It was not far off; and his father went down the lane, and showed it to him.
At the saw-pit, Frank observed how the sawyer sawed wood; he looked at some boards, which had just been sawed asunder. When the sawyer rested himself, Frank looked at the large, sharp teeth of his saw; and when the sawyer went on with his work, Frank’s father asked him to saw slowly; and Frank observed that the teeth of the saw cut and broke off very small parts of the wood, as the saw was pushed and drawn backwards and forwards. He saw a great deal of yellow dust in the saw-pit, which his father told him was called saw-dust; and fresh saw-dust fell from the teeth of the saw as it was moved.
The men who had brought the tree to be sawed into boards were all this time busy in cutting off, with a hatchet, the small branches; and Frank turned to look at what they were doing; but his father said, “Frank, I cannot wait any longer now; I have business to do at the carpenter’s.” So Frank followed his father directly; and they went on, as fast as they could, to the carpenter’s.
When they came to the door of his workshop, they heard the noise of hammering; and Frank clapped his hands, and said, “I am glad to hear hammering — I shall like to hammer, myself.”
“But,” said his father, stopping him, just as he pulled up the latch of the door, “remember that the hammer in this house is not yours; and you must not meddle with it, nor with any of the carpenter’s tools, without his leave.”
“Yes, papa,” said Frank, “I know that I must not meddle with things that are not mine. I did not meddle with any of the flowers, or cherries, in the gardener’s nice garden; and I will not meddle with any of the carpenter’s tools.” So his father took him into the workshop; and he saw the bench upon which the carpenter worked, which was called a workbench. Upon it he saw several tools — a plane, and a chisel, and a saw, and a gimlet, and a hammer. He did not meddle with any of them; and after his father had been some time in the workshop, and when he saw that Frank did not touch any of these things, he asked the carpenter to let him touch them, and to show him their use.
The carpenter, who had observed that Frank had not meddled with any of his tools, readily lent them to him to look at, and, when he had looked at them, showed him their use. He planed a little slip of wood with a plane; and he bored a hole through it with a gimlet; and he sloped off the end of it with his chisel; and then he nailed it to another piece of wood with nails, which he struck into the wood with his hammer.
And Frank asked if he might take the hammer and a nail, and hammer it into a bit of wood himself.
“You may try, if the carpenter will give you leave,” said his father.
So Frank took the hammer, and tried to hammer a nail into a bit of wood. He hit his fingers, instead of the nail, two or three times; but at last he drove it into the wood; and he said, “I thought it was much easier to do this, when I saw the carpenter hammering.” —— Frank afterwards tried to use the plane, and the saw, which he thought he could manage very easily, but he found that he could not; and he asked his father what was the reason that he could not do all this, as well as the carpenter.
The carpenter smiled, and said, “I have been learning to do all this, master, a great long while. When I first took a plane in my hand, I could not use it better than you do now.”
“Then perhaps, papa, I may learn to in time. But, papa,” said Frank, recollecting his kite, “will you be so good as to ask for the slip of wood for my kite?”
His father did so; and the carpenter found a slip that was just fit for his purpose, and gave it to him; and his father then desired him not to talk any more; “for,” said he, “we have business to do; and you must not interrupt us.”
Whilst his father was speaking to the carpenter about his own business, Frank went to the window, to look at it, for it was a different sort of window from those which he had been used to see in his father’s house. It opened like a door; and the panes of the glass were very small, and had flat slips of lead all round them.
Whilst Frank was examining this window, he h
eard the sound of a horse trotting; and he looked out, and he saw a horse upon the road which was before the window.
The horse had a saddle and bridle on, but nobody was riding upon it. It stopped, and ate some grass by the road-side, and then went down a lane.
Soon after Frank had seen the horse go by, his father, who had finished his business with the carpenter, called to Frank, and told him that he was going home.
Frank thanked the carpenter for letting him look at the plane, and the saw, and the chisel, and for giving him a slip of wood for his kite; and he took the bit of wood with him, and followed his father. When his father and he had walked a few yards from the carpenter’s door, a man passed by them, who seemed very hot, and very much tired. He looked back at Frank’s father, and said, “Pray, sir, did you see a horse go by this way, a little while ago?”
“No, sir, I did not,” said Frank’s father.
“But I did, papa,” said Frank. “I saw a horse going by, upon this road, whilst I was standing, just now, at the carpenter’s window.”
“Pray, master, what color was the horse you saw?” said the man, “Black, sir,” said Frank.
“Had he a saddle and a bridle on?” said the man.
“Yes, sir, he had,” answered Frank.
“And pray, master,” said the man, “will you be so good as to tell me whether he went on upon this road, straight before us, or whether he turned down this lane to the right, or this other lane to the left hand?”
As the man spoke, he pointed to the lanes, and Frank answered, “The horse that I saw, sir, galloped down this lane to my right-hand side.”
“Thank you, master,” said the man. “I will go after him; I hope the people at the house, yonder, will stop him. He is as quiet and good a horse as can be, only that, whenever I leave him by the road-side, without tying him fast by the bridle, he is apt to stray away; and that is what he has done now.” The man, after “saying this, went down the lane to his right-hand side; and Frank walked on, with his father.
The road towards home was up a steep hill, and Frank began to be tired before he had got half way up the hill.
“It did not tire me so much, papa, as we came down the hill; but it is very difficult to get up it again.”
“I do not hear all that you are saying,” said his father, “you are so far behind me. Cannot you keep up with me?”
“No, papa,” cried Frank, as loud as he could, “because I am tired. My knees are very much tired, coming up this great hill.” His father stopped and looked back, and saw that Frank was trying to come up the hill as fast as he could.
At this time Frank heard the noise of a horse behind him; and he looked, and saw the man whom he had spoken to a little while before, riding upon the black horse, which he had seen going down the lane.
The man said to him, “Thank you, master, for telling me which way my horse went. You see I have got him again; you seem sadly tired; I will carry you up this hill upon my horse, if you have a mind.”
“I will ask my father if he likes it,” said Frank.
His father said, “Yes, if you please;” and the man took Frank up, and set him before him, upon the horse, and put his arm round Frank’s body, to hold him fast upon the horse. Then the horse walked gently up the hill, and Frank’s father walked beside him. And when they came to the top of the steep hill, his father took Frank down from the horse, and he thanked the man for carrying him; and he felt rested, and able to walk on merrily with his father.
And as they walked on, he said to his father “I am glad that I saw the horse, and observed which way it went, and that I told the man which road it went. You know, papa, there were three roads; and the man could not know which way the horse went, till I told him. If I had not told him the right road, he would have gone on — on — on, a great way; and he would have tired himself; and he would not have found his horse. It would have been very foolish and ill-natured of me to have done that.”
“Yes, it would,” said his father; “that would have been telling what was not the truth. Now you have seen one of the uses of telling the truth.”
“One of the uses, papa! Are there more uses, papa?”
“Yes, a great many.”
“Will you tell them all to me?”
“I would rather that you should find them out for yourself,” said his father; “you will find them all out some time or other.”
Then Frank began to talk about his kite; and as soon as he got home, his father showed him how to make it, and helped him to do it. And when it was made, he left it to dry; for the paste, which pasted the paper together, was wet; and his father told him that it must dry before the paste would hold the paper together, and before the kite was fit to be used.
Frank left it to dry; and when it was quite dry, his father told him that he might go out on the grass, in a field near the house, and fly it.
Frank did so; and it went up very high in the air; and it staid up, now higher, now lower, for some time; and the sun shone upon it, so that it was plainly seen; and the wind swelled out the sides of it, as Frank pulled it by the middle with the string.
His mother came to the window, to look at the kite; and Frank was glad that she saw it, too; and, when it came down, it fell upon the smooth grass, and it was not torn. Frank carried it into the house, and put it by care-
fully, that it might not be spoiled, and that he might have the pleasure of flying it another day; and he said, “I wish I could find out why the kite goes up!”
It was a rainy day, and Frank could not go out to fly his kite; he amused himself with playing with his horse-chestnuts. He was playing in a room by himself; and, by accident, he threw one of his horse-chestnuts against the window, and it broke a pane of glass. Immediately he ran down stairs, into the room where he knew his mother was, and went up to her. She was speaking to somebody, and did not see him; and he laid his hand upon her arm, to make her attend to him; and the moment she turned her face to him, he said, “Mamma, I have broken the window in your bed-chamber, by throwing a horse-chestnut against it.”
His mother said, “I am very sorry you have broken my window; but I am glad, my dear Frank, that you came directly to tell me of it.” And his mother kissed him.
“But how shall I prevent you,” said she, “from breaking my window again, with your horse-chestnut?”
“I will take care not to break it again, mamma,” said Frank. “But you said that you would take care before you broke it today; and yet you see that you have broken it. After you burnt your finger, by letting the hot sealing-wax drop upon it, you took a great deal of care not to do the same thing again; did not you?”
“O, yes, mamma,” said Frank, squeezing the finger which he burnt, just as he did at the time he burnt it. “O, yes, mamma, I took a great deal of care not to do the same thing again, for fear of burning myself again.”
“And if you had felt some pain when you broke the window, just now, do you not think that you should take care not to do so again?”
“Yes, mamma.”
Where is the horse-chestnut with which you broke the window?”
“It is lying upon the floor in your room.”
“Go and fetch it.”
Frank went for it, and brought it to his mother; and she took it in her hand, and said, “You would be sorry to see this horse-chestnut thrown away; would not you?”
“Yes, mamma,” said Frank; “for I like to roll it about, and to play with it; and it is the only one of my horse-chestnuts that I have left.”
“But,” said his mother, “I am afraid that you will break another of my windows with it; and if you would throw it away, you could not break them with it; and the pain you would feel, at your horse-chestnut’s being thrown away, would make you remember, I think, not to throw hard things against glass windows again.”
Frank stood for a little while, looking at his horse-chestnut; and then he said, “Well, mamma, I will throw it away;” and he threw it out of the window.
Some d
ays afterwards, his mother called Frank to the table where she was at work; and she took out of her work-basket two leather balls, and gave them to Frank; one of them was very hard, and the other was very soft.
His mother desired that he would play with the soft ball when he was in the house, and with the hard ball when he was out of doors. She said that she had made the soft ball on purpose for him, that he might have one to play with when it was rainy weather, and when he could not go out.
This soft ball was stuffed with horse-hair; it was not stuffed tight; Frank could squeeze it together with his fingers; and his mother threw it against the window, and it bounded back without breaking the glass.
Frank thanked his mother; and he liked the two balls very much. And his mother said to him, “You have not broken any more windows, Frank, since you punished yourself by throwing away your horse-chestnut; and now I am glad to reward you for your truth and good sense.”
About a week after Frank’s mother had given him the two balls, she came into the room where he had been playing at ball. Nobody had been in the room with him till his mother came in; she had a large nosegay of pinks and carnations in her hand — —” Look here, Frank,” said she; “the gardener, who lives at the garden with the green gate, has brought these pinks and carnations, and has given them to me; he says they are some of those which you helped him to tie up.”
“O, they are very pretty! they are very sweet!” said Frank, smelling to them, as his mother held them towards him. “May I help you, mamma, to put them into the flower-pot?”
“Yes, my dear; bring the flower-pot to me, which stands on that little table, and we will put these flowers into it.”
She sat down; and Frank ran to the little table for the flower-pot.
“There is no water in it, mamma,” said Frank.
“But we can put some in,” said his mother—”Well! why do not you bring it to me?”
“Mamma,” said Frank, “I am afraid to take it up, for here is a great large crack all down the flower-pot; and when I touched it, just now, it shook. It seems quite loose; and I think it will fall to pieces, if I take it in my hands.”
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 585