Author: fitz

Perhaps there is no other material of such universal application for constructive, decorative, and an endless variety of other purposes, as “Wood”; or that affords occupation to so large a number of persons.

Life, with the major portion of my readers, is too short for a full and exhaustive study of wood in its living state as a tree, or in its dead state as timber; the one embracing Botany and Arboriculture, and the other general construction, in which latter the architect, the civil engineer; the clerk of works, the timber convertor, and the builder play an important part.
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I hold that a man may become a teacher at any age, but that he should not take upon himself to write reminiscences until he is in the sere and yellow leaf, otherwise “in the thin grey line.” It is only then that his retrospective eye sees further than the mass of his neighbours, and he can, if the spirit moves him, picture scenes and phases of life which are far beyond the common.

It is said of man that he may look forward in life up to the fiftieth year of his age, and beyond that he must look backward. In doing the latter, a long vista is presented to a man like myself, who counts his winters to be three score years and ten, and on reflection one is led to say with Shakespeare that “a man in his time plays many parts.”

Personally, I can endorse this truism, for one of my parts has been that of a professional handrailer and staircase builder, when the newel staircases, now so general, were scarcely known. I started in this line in 1847, when fourteen years of age, my father fitting me out with a bench in his shop, and equipping me with the necessary tools.
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James Wilson, who has the honor of being the maker of the first pair of terrestrial and celestial globes ever made in America, was a native of Londonderry, N.H. He was born in 1763. He early felt a strong love of knowledge, and gave proof of talents of the right stamp for acquiring it, but felt constrained by circumstances to devote himself to the laborious occupation of a farmer.

Up to the age of thirty-three he pursued that employment in the place of his nativity; not, however, without reading, observation, and reflection. His inclination and genius turned his thoughts and studies especially to geography and astronomy, with the means of their illustration.
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The Carriage-business is of a nature so peculiar, that it is of the utmost importance that manufacturers should at all times have on hand a good supply of well-seasoned and well-selected timber. This every manufacturer who has been in the business long must have learned from experience. At how dear a rate has many a coach-maker obtained this knowledge in the first year!

Having very little experience in practical business life and taking everybody to be as honest as himself, he, with limited means, goes to a lumber-merchant and purchases a quantity of “stuff,” which he is told is dry. Now, there is a vast difference between seasoned and dry timber. No one knows this better than the lumber-merchant, and yet we have known many—honest men, no doubt—who would, if they could, palm off on the unsuspecting an article represented as dry, which, when it come to be worked, would be found as green as the duped purchaser.
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One day last summer we overheard two seaside urchins discussing, coram populo, the merits of a couple of golfers whom they called “Johnnie” and “Freddy.” Any uninitiated listener would have been surprised to find that these players were not at all juvenile, but strapping Scotchmen, in the zenith of their power and fame. Their caddie critics spoke in the familiarity of adulation, and used the customary parlance of the place and species; and it is not a little remarkable that Robert Forgan, living in such an atmosphere of unconstraint, should have escaped the usual abbreviation of name, and have been able to retain his in its original form.

It may be that his somewhat large proportions have impressed even the densest of his familiar neighbours with the inappropriateness of a diminutive title as applied to him. No doubt an ignorant Southron has blundered, and, mixing up two names long associated in the club-making trade, has called him “Morgan, the club maker;” but we are referring to an exception made by an educated people, whose very caddies require to satisfy governmental inspection in the matter of brains.
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