In the making of a chair, as in the building of a boat by one who has had
no training in any branch of carpentry, there is scope for the personal
element. Though the parts have been cut and trimmed with minute care and
all possible precision, each, according to requirements, being the
duplicate of the other, when they come to be assembled obstructive
obstinacy prevails. One of the most fiendish things the art of man
contrives is a chair out of the routine design made by a rule-of-thumb
carpenter. Grotesque in its deformities, you must needs pity your own
mishandling of the obstinate wood. Have you courage to smile at the
misshapen handiwork, or do you cowardly, discard the deformity you have
created? How it grunts and groans as pressure is applied to its stubborn
bent limbs! Curvature of the spine is the least of its ills. It limps and
creaks when fixed tentatively for trial. Tender-footed, it stands awry,
heaving one leg aloft--as crooked and as perverse as Caliban. In good
time, botching here, violent constraint there, the chair finds itself or
is forced so to do, for he is a weak man who is not stronger than his own
chair. So, after many days' intense toil--toil which even troubled the
night watches, for have I not lain awake with thoughts automatically
concentrated on a seemingly impossible problem, plotting by what illicit
and awful torture it might be possible for the tough and stubborn parts
to be brought into juxtaposition--there is a chair--a solid, sitable
chair, which neither squeaks, nor shuffles, nor shivers. May be you are
ashamed at the quantity of mind the dull article of furniture has
absorbed; but there are other reflections--homely as well as philosophic.




CHAPTER II