Making an axe-helve is like writing a poem (though I never wrote one).  The material is free enough, but it takes a poet to use it.  Some people imagine that any fine thought is poetry, but there was never a greater mistake.  A fine thought, to become poetry, must be seasoned in the upper warm garrets of the mind for long and long, then it must be brought down and slowly carved into words, shaped with emotion, polished with love.  Else it is no true poem.  Some people imagine that any hickory stick will make an axe-helve.  But this is far from the truth.  When I had whittled away for several evenings with my draw-shave and jack-knife, both of which I keep sharpened to the keenest edge, I found that my work was not progressing as well as I had hoped.

“This is more of a task,” I remarked one evening, “than I had imagined.”

Harriet, rocking placidly in her arm-chair, was mending a number of pairs of new socks, Poor Harriet!  Lacking enough old holes to occupy her energies, she mends holes that may possibly appear.  A frugal person!

“Well, David,” she said, “I warned you that you could buy a helve cheaper than you could make it.”

“So I can buy a book cheaper than I can write it,” I responded.

I felt somewhat pleased with my return shot, though I took pains not to show it.  I squinted along my hickory stick which was even then beginning to assume, rudely, the outlines of an axe-handle.  I had made a prodigious pile of fine white shavings and I was tired, but quite suddenly there came over me a sort of love for that length of wood.  I sprung it affectionately over my knee, I rubbed it up and down with my hand, and then I set it in the corner behind the fireplace.

“After all,” I said, for I had really been disturbed by Harriet’s remark—­“after all, power over one thing gives us power over everything.  When you mend socks prospectively—­into futurity—­Harriet, that is an evidence of true greatness.”

“Sometimes I think it doesn’t pay,” remarked Harriet, though she was plainly pleased.

“Pretty good socks,” I said, “can be bought for fifteen cents a pair.”

Harriet looked at me suspiciously, but I was as sober as the face of nature.

For the next two or three evenings I let the axe-helve stand alone in the corner.  I hardly looked at it, though once in a while, when occupied with some other work, I would remember, or rather half remember, that I had a pleasure in store for the evening.  The very thought of sharp tools and something, to make with them acts upon the imagination with peculiar zest.  So we love to employ the keen edge of the mind upon a knotty and difficult subject.