Early one morning in March the dawn came with a roaring wind, sleety snow drove down over the hill, the house creaked and complained in every clapboard.  A blind of one of the upper windows, wrenched loose from its fastenings, was driven shut with such force that it broke a window pane.  When I rushed up to discover the meaning of the clatter and to repair the damage, I found the floor covered with peculiar long fragments of glass—­the pane having been broken inward from the centre.

“Just what I have wanted,” I said to myself.

I selected a few of the best pieces and so eager was I to try them that
I got out my axe-helve before breakfast and sat scratching away when
Harriet came down.

Nothing equals a bit of broken glass for putting on the final perfect touch to a work of art like an axe-helve.  Nothing will so beautifully and delicately trim out the curves of the throat or give a smoother turn to the waist.  So with care and an indescribable affection, I added the final touches, trimming the helve until it exactly fitted my hand.  Often and often I tried it in pantomime, swinging nobly in the centre of the sitting-room (avoiding the lamp), attentive to the feel of my hand as it ran along the helve.  I rubbed it down with fine sandpaper until it fairly shone with whiteness.  Then I borrowed a red flannel cloth of Harriet and having added a few drops—­not too much—­of boiled oil, I rubbed the helve for all I was worth.  This I continued for upward of an hour.  At that time the axe-helve had taken on a yellowish shade, very clear and beautiful.

I do not think I could have been prouder if I had carved a statue or built a parthenon.  I was consumed with vanity; but I set the new helve in the corner with the appearance of utter unconcern.

“There,” I remarked, “it’s finished.”

I watched Harriet out of the corner of my eye:  she made as if to speak and then held silent.

That evening friend Horace came in.  I was glad to see him.  Horace is or was a famous chopper.  I placed him at the fireplace where his eye, sooner or later, must fall upon my axe-helve.  Oh, I worked out my designs!  Presently he saw the helve, picked it up at once and turned it over in his hands.  I had a suffocating, not unhumorous, sense of self-consciousness.  I know how a poet must feel at hearing his first poem read aloud by some other person who does not know its authorship.  I suffer and thrill with the novelist who sees a stranger purchase his book in a book-shop.  I felt as though I stood that moment before the Great Judge.

Horace “hefted” it and balanced it, and squinted along it; he rubbed it with his thumb, he rested one end of it on the floor and sprung it roughly.

“David,” he said severely, “where did you git this?”

Once when I was a boy I came home with my hair wet.  My father asked: 

“David, have you been swimming?”