Washington Feb 16.—Cabinet-Maker M.W. Dove, fitting dark green leather to polished mahogany with a border of brass nails, is busily completing chairs for Cabinet-Maker F. D. Roosevelt. Making the seats of the mighty is nothing new to Dove. He’s 54 years old now, and he’s been at it ever since his early twenties when he “worked right in the palace of the czar.”
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Order is Heaven’s first law, and in no department of our business have we found less of this law than in the trimming room. Some workmen will have their work-bench filled with tacks, knobs, buckles, chalk, paste—in short, a sorry hodge-podge of here a little and there a good deal of evidence of slovenliness on the part of the occupant.
The again, the patent leather is unrolled and kicking about the floor, the moss—nobody uses moss now-a-days—and curled hair are everywhere, and the paste is sticking to everything in use. We have seen trimmers, whose jobs have been “turned out” with such a variety of paste shading, about the top and other parts of the leather as to almost entirely spoil it.
Such workmen are not fitted for their profession. The old adage, “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” was never more appropriately exercised than in the trimming department. We all know that leather, once soiled, can never be made to look as good as new. For this very reason, a trimmer should keep his hands clean, and his work, as far as practicable, as he proceeds, covered up.
Not long since, we saw in a trimming room any quantity of scraps hanging on the floor, and a pile in one corner, of dirt, and leather, and paper, and other material, as the merchants say, “too numerous to mention,” a fine place for one to raise his own fleas, and no doubt they find ample feeding ground near at hand—in the sloven’s own person!
But all are not like our hero. There are some trimmers whose habits are worthy of commendation—they are neatness itself; such we should hold up, to the class we have been describing, as worthy pattern for them to follow.
The New York Coach-Maker’s Magazine – November, 1859
—Jeff Burks
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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