I have known this little boy to take an expensive eight-day clock to
pieces, and make of it a toy steamboat. True, it was not, when
made, very much of a steamboat; but taking into consideration all
the difficulties--the inadaptability of eight-day clock machinery to
steamboat requirements, the necessity of getting the work
accomplished quickly, before conservatively-minded people with no
enthusiasm for science could interfere--a good enough steamboat.
With merely an ironing-board and a few dozen meat-skewers, he
would--provided the ironing-board was not missed in time--turn out
quite a practicable rabbit-hutch. He could make a gun out of an
umbrella and a gas-bracket, which, if not so accurate as a
Martini-Henry, was, at all events, more deadly. With half the
garden-hose, a copper scalding-pan out of the dairy, and a few
Dresden china ornaments off the drawing-room mantelpiece, he would
build a fountain for the garden. He could make bookshelves out of
kitchen tables, and crossbows out of crinolines. He could dam you a
stream so that all the water would flow over the croquet lawn. He
knew how to make red paint and oxygen gas, together with many other
suchlike commodities handy to have about a house.
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