What a tremendous power there is in work.  Carlstrom worked.  He was up early in the morning to work, and he worked in the evening as long as daylight lasted, and once I found him in his shop in the evening, bending low over his bench with a kerosene lamp in front of him.  He was humming his inevitable tune and smoothing off with a fine file the nice curves of a rifle trigger.  When he had trouble—­and what a lot of it he has had in his time!—­he worked; and when he was happy he worked all the harder.  All the leisurely ones of the town drifted by, all the children and the fools, and often rested in the doorway of his shop.  He made them all welcome:  he talked with them, but he never stopped working.  Clang, clang, would go his anvil, whish, whish, would respond his bellows, creak, creak, would go the hickory sweep—­he was helping the world go round!

All this time, though he had sickness in his family, though his wife died, and then his children one after another until only one now remains, he worked and he saved.  He bought a lot and built a house to rent; then he built another house; then he bought the land where his shop stands and rebuilt the shop itself.  It was an epic of homely work.  He took part in the work of the church and on election days he changed his coat, and went to the town hall to vote.

[Illustration:  “THE CHILDREN ...  OFTEN RESTED IN THE DOORWAY OF HIS SHOP”]

In the years since I have known the old gunsmith and something of the town where he works, I have seen young men, born Americans, with every opportunity and encouragement of a free country, growing up there and going to waste.  One day I heard one of them, sitting in front of a store, grumbling about the foreigners who were coming in and taking up the land.  The young man thought it should be prevented by law.  I said nothing; but I listened and heard from the distance the steady clang, clang, of Carlstrom’s hammer upon the anvil.

Ketchell, the store-keeper, told me how Carlstrom had longed and planned and saved to be able to go back once more to the old home he had left.  Again and again he had got almost enough money ahead to start, and then there would be an interest payment due, or a death in the family, and the money would all go to the banker, the doctor, or the undertaker.

“Of recent years,” said Ketchell, “we thought he’d given up the idea.  His friends are all here now, and if he went back, he certainly would be disappointed.”

A sort of serenity seemed, indeed, to come upon him:  his family lie on the quiet hill, old things and old times have grown distant, and upon that anvil of his before the glowing forge he has beaten out for himself a real place in this community.  He has beaten out the respect of a whole town; and from the crude human nature with which he started he has fashioned himself wisdom, and peace of mind, and the ripe humour which sees that God is in his world.  There are men I know who read many books, hoping to learn how to be happy; let me commend them to Carlstrom, the gunsmith.