The Greatest Christmas Novels Collection (Illustrated Edition). Лаймен ФрÑнк Баум
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with its neat cylinders, its polished levers, its beautifully designed gear. It stood under a big case made of thick glass plates set in an iron frame with a solid top; a chain ran through two cast-iron wheels overhead to a counterpoise in the corner, by which device it was easily raised and lowered. The Motor was a very expensive affair, and had to be carefully protected from dust and all injury, though it was worth nothing at present except for old brass and iron, unless the new part could be made.
"Come, my boy, let's think of something more cheerful!" Overholt said, making an effort to rouse himself and concentrated his attention on the paper model. "Christmas is coming in three weeks, you know, and it will come just the same in the little City. I'm sure the people will decorate their houses and the church. Of course we cannot see the insides of the houses, but in Boston they put wreaths in the windows. And we'll have a snowstorm, just as we used to have, and we can clear it away afterwards! Wasn't there a holly tree somewhere near the College? You haven't put that in yet. You have no idea how cheerful it will look! To-morrow we'll find a very small sprig with berries on it, and plant it just in the right place. I'm sure you remember where it stood."
"Real leaves would be too big," observed the boy. "They wouldn't look right. Of course, one could cut the branches out of tin and paint 'em green with red spots, and stick them into a twig for the trunk. But it's rather hard to do."
"Let's try," said Overholt. "I've got some fine chisels and some very thin brass, but I don't think I could draw the branches as well as you could."
"Oh, I can draw them something like, if you'll only cut 'em out," the boy answered cheerfully. "Come on, father! Who says we can't make bricks without straw? I'll bet anything we can!"
So they worked together steadily, and for an hour or two the inventor was so busy in cutting out tiny branches of imaginary holly with a very small chisel that he did not look once at the plate glass from which his engine seemed to be grinning at him, in fiendish delight over his misfortunes. There were times when he was angry with it, outright, as if it knew what he was doing and did not mean to give in to him and let itself be invented.
But now the tune of the lathe and the chisel still ran on in his head, for he had heard it through two whole days and could not get rid of it.
"Bricks without straw, bricks without straw!" repeated the lathe viciously. "Ever so much better than no bricks at all, sh—sh—sh!" answered the chisel, gibbering and hissing like an idiot.
"You will certainly be lying on straw before long, and then I suppose you'll wish you had something else!" squeaked the little chisel with which he was cutting out holly leaves, as it went through the thin plates into the wood of the bench under each push of his hand.
The things in the workshop all seemed to be talking to him together, and made his head ache.
"I had a letter from your mother to-day," he said, because it was better to hear his own voice say anything than to listen to such depressing imaginary conversations. "I'm sorry to say she sees no chance of getting home before the spring."
"I don't know where you'd put her if she came here," answered the practical Newton. "Your room leaks when it rains, and so does mine. You two would have to sleep in the parlour. I guess it'll be better if she doesn't come now."
"Oh, for her, far better," assented Overholt. "They've got a beautiful flat in Munich, and everything they can possibly think of. Your mother's only complaint, so far as that goes, is that those girls are completely spoilt by too much luxury!"
"What is luxury, exactly, father?" asked Newton, who always wanted to know things.
"I shall never know myself, and perhaps you never will either!" The wretched inventor tried to laugh. "But that's no answer to your question, is it? I suppose luxury means always having twice as much of everything as you can possibly use, and having it about ten times as fine and expensive as other people can afford."
"I don't see any use in that," said the boy. "Now I know just how much turkey and cranberry sauce and ice-cream I really need, and if I get just a little more than that, it's Christmas. I don't mean much more, but about half a helping. I know all about proverbs. Haven't I copied millions of 'em in learning to write. One reason why it's so slow to learn is that the things you have to write are perfect nonsense. 'Enough is as good as a feast!' All I can say is, the man who made that proverb never had a feast, or he'd have known better! This green paint doesn't dry very quick, father. We'll have to wait till to-morrow before we put in the red spots for the berries. I wish I had some little red beads. They'd stick on the wet paint now, like one o'clock."
There were no red beads, so he rose to go to bed. When he had said good-night and had reached the door, he stopped and looked back again.
"Say, father, haven't you anything you can sell to get some more money for the Motor?"
John Henry shook his weary head and smiled sadly.
"Nothing that would bring nearly enough to pay for the casting," he answered. "Don't worry about it, boy. Leave that to me—I'm used to it. Go to bed and sleep, and you'll feel like an Air-Motor yourself in the morning!"
"That's the worst of it," returned the boy. "Just to sit there under a glass case and have you take care of me and do nothing, like a girl. That's the way I feel sometimes."
He shook his young head quite as gravely as the inventor had shaken his own, and went quietly to bed without saying anything more.
"I don't know what to do, I'm sure," he said to himself as he got into bed, "but I'm sure there's something. Maybe I'll dream it, and then I'll do just the contrary and it'll come all right."
But boys of practical minds and sound bodies do not dream at all, unless it be after a feast, and most of them can stand even that without having nightmare, unless two feasts come near together, like Christmas and a birthday within the week.
A great-uncle of mine was once taken for a clergyman at a public dinner nearly a hundred years ago, and he was asked to say grace; he was a good man, and also practical, and had a splendid appetite, but he was not eloquent, and this is what he said:—
"The Lord give us appetites to enjoy, and strength to digest ALL the good things set before us. Amen!"
And everybody said "Amen" very cheerfully and fell to.
IV
HOW THERE WAS A FAMINE IN THE CITY
It rained in New York and it "snowed slush" in Connecticut, after its manner, and the world was a very dreary place, especially all around the dilapidated cottage where everything was going to pieces, including John Henry Overholt's last hopes.
If he had been alone in the world he would have taken his small cash balance and his model to the foundry, quite careless as to whether he ever got a meal again until the Motor worked. But there was the boy to be thought of, and desperate as the unhappy inventor was, he would not starve his son as well as himself. He was quite sure of his little balance, though he had never had any head for figures of that sort. It was an easy affair in his eyes to handle the differential calculus, which will do anything, metaphorically speaking, from smashing a rock as flat and thin as a postage stamp, to regulating an astronomical clock; but to understand the complication of a pass-book and a bank account was a matter of the greatest possible difficulty. Newton would have done it much better, though he could not get to the head of his class in arithmetic. That is the difference between being an inventor and having a practical mind. As for Mrs. Overholt, she was perfectly wonderful at keeping accounts; but then she had been taught a great many things, from music and drawing to compound interest and double entry, and she had been taught them all just so far as to be able to do them nicely without understanding at all what she did; which is sound modern education, and no mistake. The object of music is to make a cheerful noise, which can be done very well without pencil and paper and the rules of harmony.
But Overholt could neither make a cheerful noise, nor draw a holly