Harry's Holiday/Chapter VI

Harry lost no time in commencing his operations; for early the next morning he went to the blacksmith's, and ordered a winch to be made-not, as is usual, to fit a machine, but intending a machine to fit the winch; he thought it would be wasting his time to make what a blacksmith could do just as well.

“I hope you were pleased with what you saw and heard last night, Harry,” said his father.

“Oh yes! very much indeed, papa,” said he; “and particularly with the air-pump.”

“The air-pump was perhaps alto​gether the most interesting instrument on the table; and I should think, on account of the nicety of the workmanship, it must have been the most expensive.”

“Is an air-pump so very difficult to make, papa?” said Harry.

“It must require great skill and perfection of workmanship,” said his father, “especially in the tubes and pistons, because of the resistance made by the external air.”

“Charles Mason says he thinks he can make an electrical machine; and I thought perhaps I—perhaps I could make an air-pump.”

“You know, Harry,” said his father, “there have been some things which you have wished to do that I have told you would be tiresome, fatiguing, or difficult; but I assure you that to make ​an air-pump you will find quite impossible. I think it is possible to make an electrical machine, because care, patience, and neatness in making the various parts will be sufficient; but then nobody can do that who is not careful and patient, and neat in his workmanship.”

Seeing that there were so many difficulties in the way, Harry, for once, was persuaded to relinquish his scheme, and determined, instead of an air-pump, to make an electrical machine. It must be observed, however, that the winch he had ordered was the turning-point of the business, for that, he recollected, would serve as well for one as the other.

“Well, then, papa,” said he, “you think I can make an electrical machine?”

​“I said, Harry, that I thought a careful, patient person, who could work neatly, might make one:—what think you now?”

“I think, if Charles Mason tries,” said Harry, “I may as well.”

“Very well,” said his father, “try;—I will give you all the advice I can while you are doing it,—but pray where is your cylinder?”

“Oh dear! I forgot that,” said Harry. “I wonder what Charles Mason will do?”

“I cannot deny,” said his father, “that I have by me such a thing as a glass cylinder, made on purpose for an electrical machine; and I will make this proposal to you, Harry:—if you will really put together and finish all the other parts, so that they will probably serve the purpose, I will give ​you the cylinder; and if in any part you find a difficulty which you cannot overcome, I will procure you assistance, provided I see that you are really taking pains and persevering; but lest, in the mean time, the cylinder should be broken, I shall keep it myself till your part is completed.”

“I think I shall try now,” said Harry.

“But I must give you the dimensions,” said his father, reaching down the cylinder from a high shelf; “you see it is ten inches long; that is all that is necessary for you to know,” and he replaced it immediately.

The sight of this cylinder, which, to be sure, was exactly the thing, was sufficient to make Harry extremely impatient to possess it.

His father not only procured all the ​materials, but gave Harry so many directions, and was so ready to assist whenever there was any real difficulty, that he had a very fair opportunity of succeeding; and as, at present, he felt a great deal of interest himself in the undertaking, there were some who really thought that, for once, he would.

Although it is known to be a fact, that some lads, not much older than Harry, have contrived to make an electrical machine, yet it must be confessed that it is rather a difficult undertaking for one so young; and that it would not have been much disgrace, if, after having done his best, he had been obliged to give it up. However, giving it up was the last thing that anybody thought of at the end of the first day of his operations, for he had got so forward, and what he had done ​looked so well, that there appeared little doubt of his success. In the evening, after having done more that day than in all the former part of the week, he set off in high spirits to his friend Charles Mason, to see how he was going on, and to converse with him on the subject.

“Ah, Harry, how do you do?” said Charles; “how is your air-pump?”

“Oh, my-ah, my air-pump,” said Harry, who had quite forgotten that he had ever intended to make one, “why papa said that it was impossible for me to make an air-pump, and I shall make an electrical machine instead.”

“Will you?” said Charles; “now you shall see what I have done, and what a nice cylinder I have got.”

“Oh,—but it's only a bottle!” said Harry, rather agreeably surprised.

​“Well,—a bottle, I know it,” said Charles, “but it is quite straight, and quite large enough;—what have you got, may I ask?”

“A cylinder, ten inches long, made on purpose,” said Harry, but it slipped his memory just then that he had not yet got it.

“Well, how do you like my machine,” said Charles, “as far as it is done?”

It was not apparently so forward as Harry's, but an accurate observer might discover signs of more substantial workmanship.

“I dare say that it will be a very good one,” said Harry, who could not help thinking his own the best because it was the largest; but I should like you to see mine; when will you come?”

​“When I have done my own,” said Charles;—“and I'll bring it with me.”

Harry now returned more than ever satisfied with his own machine, and longing much for the time when he might compare it with Charles Mason's.

“Now,” thought Harry, as he was dressing himself next morning, “I have two whole days left to finish my machine; I can do a great deal in two days—let's see—to-day I shall do that, and that—and then to-morrow I shall be ready for the cylinder.—Oh, but there's the conductor to make, and to cover it with tin-foil—what's the use of not letting me have the cylinder now? Papa thinks, I suppose, that I ​shall not finish it; but for once he's mistaken. “So saying, Harry ran down stairs to his work, and did something considerable before breakfast.

“Did you see Charles Mason last night, Harry?” said his father; “has he begun his machine?”

“O yes, papa,” said Harry, “but it is a very small one, and he has only got a bottle for a cylinder.”

“Well, I have seen a very good electrical machine, which had only a bottle for a cylinder.”

“But certainly my machine will be the best, papa.”

“I cannot say anything about that at present,” replied his father; “it must depend upon which of you take the most pains, and who is the most persevering. From what I know of Charles Mason, I have little doubt of ​his making a very neat electrical machine, whether he has only a bottle or a cylinder made on purpose, and I hope you will do the same.”

But Harry intended to do a great deal better, and wondered that his father seemed to have any doubt about it. He was pleased to see how much like an electrical machine his work began to look, and only wished for the cylinder, that he might just hold it in its place for a moment, to make it look still more like one.

But Harry's machine was not really so forward as it appeared to be, it having been roughly and hastily put together, that it might have the form of a machine as soon as possible, to gratify his impatience; so that the cutting and clipping, and filing, and ​fitting, was all to come. It is true, his father had promised him assistance, in case of any grand and insuperable difficulty, but the greatest difficulty of all to Harry, which was the trouble and labour, no one had offered to take off his hands; however, his patience lasted pretty well, till it fell to his hard lot to file a large piece of iron much smaller, and to make it square, for the winch to turn it.

At last, taking this for one of the impossibilities his father had mentioned, he determined to claim the promise.

“Papa,” said he, “here is a thing I cannot do; I can't file this piece of iron at all, and it must be square to put the winch on.”

“And why cannot you file it, Harry?”

​“It's so hard, sir, it's impossible:—you know you said, papa, you would help me when anything was impossible.”

“And so I will, Harry, depend upon it; but this requires nothing but a little patience; perhaps you mean it is impossible for anybody to do it without patience?—I would strongly advise you to persevere, and then if you find it to be impossible,I promise that you shall be assisted: remember Hercules and the clown, Harry.”

With this answer he returned, and after a great deal of lazy kind of labour, he reduced it to such a size and shape, as he thought perhaps would do; he then, for the first time since this job had been in hand, left off to rest himself: just then the blacksmith's boy came with the winch, ​which Harry was very glad to see;—but, alas! when he came to try it on the pin he had been filing, it was so much too large as to be positively of no use at all.

“Now how stupid and provoking!” said he, as he applied it to the machine; “if I had not worried myself so long in filing that pin away, it might have done.”

“This winch is of no use,” said he to the boy; “your father has made it large enough for the jack.”

“If you please, sir, my father says, you didn't mention no purtiklar size.”

“But he was not obliged to make it too large, was he?” said Harry; “if he had made it too small, it would not have signified so much.”

“No, sir, ’twon't so,” said the lad.

“Then tell your father he must ​make one a great deal smaller, and you may take this back; it's of no use at all,” replied Harry.

“Yes, sir,” said the lad, and with this wise message he departed.

“Now,” said Harry to himself, “I suppose I have got to wait nobody knows how long for this stupid winch: however it's of no use being in much of a hurry about the machine; for if it was done now, I could'nt use it.”

So what with fatigue, disappointment, and indolence, Harry was contented to to allow himself to rest till dinner-time.

After dinner he felt so little disposed to his undertaking, that he would certainly have rested himself that afternoon, if he had not recollected that there was but one day more of his holiday left; and as he ​was not yet so tired but that he fully intended and expected to finish his machine, he determined to see what more he could do before the winch came home.

But Harry did not yet know how to determine against his inclination; for not being disposed just then to exert himself, he rather played with his tools than worked with them. He could not prevail upon himself to finish any part he took in hand, but as soon as he met with any difficulty, or grew tired, he laid that part aside, and began another; so that it was with this, as with the chart of history, when there was nothing new to begin upon, he grew tired of his job altogether.

“Now,” thought Harry, “the cylinder is exactly the thing I want; and yet I know if I were to ask for it ​now, I shouldn't have it. I don't think there would be much harm in my just getting it down to look at—I could go on as well again then—in short, I don't see I can go on at all without it.”

How easily persons may know whether the thing they are meditating to do is right or wrong! Who was it that Harry was talking to when he said “much harm?”—he was talking to his conscience; and people seldom talk much with their consciences when they are doing right.

Thus Harry, not contented with wasting his own time, and spoiling his own things, did not scruple to make free with what belonged to others; so, having had the last word with his conscience, he went softly to the place where the cylinder had been ​laid, and reaching it very carefully from the shelf (for he seemed much afraid of a disaster), he put it under his coat and returned.

“This,” thought Harry, “is something like—who will say I can't make an electrical machine?” said he, as he held the cylinder in the frame. “They are always saying that I never finish anything; but now, for once, they'll see—why it is just finished.” And so a person standing at some distance might almost think, while Harry was holding the cylinder in its place, but a closer examination would have shown that there was a great deal to do, and much to undo, before Harry could see a spark from it.

But he thought differently; indeed his machine seemed to him so near being done, after he had seen the ​cylinder in it, that he fell to work with new spirit, thinking that his labour would soon be over.

But though he worked for a little time with something like industry, he did not prosper from the moment he had this thing in his possession; and this was probably owing to his excesive hurry and impatience. Twice did part of the frame give way, while he was forcing it to fit this cylinder, and as often did he repair it with nails and glue, and then, without waiting till the glue was dry, force it again; so that all his work became ricketty and unsound.

At last, tired, hot, disappointed, and cross, he resorted to his old expedient of leaving off for the present; and without making any reflections on the disgrace he must incur if he suf​fered his whole week's holiday to pass without having done one thing worth doing, he gave himself what he called a real holiday for the rest of the evening, and that always consisted in doing literally nothing: so ended the fifth day.