Bankruptcy -- Fiction; Gold mines and mining -- Alaska -- Fiction; Oakland (Calif.) -- Fiction; Western stories; Women pioneers -- Fiction
There was the matter of the plumbing. He was enabled to purchase the
materials through a lucky sale of a number of his hair bridles. The
work he did himself, though more than once he was forced to call in
Dede to hold tight with a pipe-wrench. And in the end, when the
bath-tub and the stationary tubs were installed and in working order,
he could scarcely tear himself away from the contemplation of what his
hands had wrought. The first evening, missing him, Dede sought and
found him, lamp in hand, staring with silent glee at the tubs. He
rubbed his hand over their smooth wooden lips and laughed aloud, and
was as shamefaced as any boy when she caught him thus secretly exulting
in his own prowess.
It was this adventure in wood-working and plumbing that brought about
the building of the little workshop, where he slowly gathered a
collection of loved tools. And he, who in the old days, out of his
millions, could purchase immediately whatever he might desire, learned
the new joy of the possession that follows upon rigid economy and
desire long delayed. He waited three months before daring the
extravagance of a Yankee screw-driver, and his glee in the marvelous
little mechanism was so keen that Dede conceived forthright a great
idea. For six months she saved her egg-money, which was hers by right
of allotment, and on his birthday presented him with a turning-lathe of
wonderful simplicity and multifarious efficiencies. And their mutual
delight in the tool, which was his, was only equalled by their delight
in Mab's first foal, which was Dede's special private property.
It was not until the second summer that Daylight built the huge
fireplace that outrivalled Ferguson's across the valley. For all these
things took time, and Dede and Daylight were not in a hurry. Theirs
was not the mistake of the average city-dweller who flees in
ultra-modern innocence to the soil. They did not essay too much.
Neither did they have a mortgage to clear, nor did they desire wealth.
They wanted little in the way of food, and they had no rent to pay. So
they planned unambiguously, reserving their lives for each other and
for the compensations of country-dwelling from which the average
country-dweller is barred. From Ferguson's example, too, they profited
much. Here was a man who asked for but the plainest fare; who
ministered to his own simple needs with his own hands; who worked out
as a laborer only when he needed money to buy books and magazines; and
who saw to it that the major portion of his waking time was for
enjoyment. He loved to loaf long afternoons in the shade with his
books or to be up with the dawn and away over the hills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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