MY KNIFE.
Perhaps I am wrong in calling it a knife; it is one of those small buck’s-horn tool-chests weighing nearly a pound. On one side of it there are six blades of various sizes, a file, and a saw; on the other, lying snugly beneath a long hook designed to pull stones out of your horse’s hoofs, but useful for unlacing boots, there are a gimblet, a corkscrew, a bradawl, a button hook, and a pair of compasses. At one end there is a screwdriver; at the other a sort of nail-brush. Sheathed in the handle are a tooth-pick, a packing-needle, a pair of tweezers, and a foot-rule, jointed; and affixed to the handle is a square piece of steel, which serves the purpose of a hammer. For the possession of this invaluable instrument, I am indebted to phrenology. In my younger days, my father, who was a believer in that and most other new ’ologies, took me to a travelling professor, who, after running his fingers through my hair, made out a “chart,” for which he charged the inconsiderable sum of one shilling.
My father asked him for what occupation he thought me fitted.
“That, my good sir,” said the professor, smiling blandly and writhing apologetically, “comes under the denomination of advice, for which we charge five shillings.”
A transfer of coin took place.
Dropping the money into his pocket, and the elbow of his right arm into the palm of his left hand, the professor placed the forefinger of his right hand upon his forehead, and closing both eyes, compressed his face into the smallest possible compass, and seemed lost in thought for some moments. Arousing himself at length, he gave utterance to the following judgment: “Constructiveness, very large—should be encouraged. The boy is, by his developments, fitted to become a great engineer, a great mechanic, or a great architect. He may become neither of these, but if the constructive faculty be properly cultivated, he should become either one or all of them.”
The knife was purchased on our way home—not as a “mere plaything,” as my father somewhat unnecessarily explained to my mother, who looked with horror upon the instrument, but as “a cultivator of the organ of constructiveness.”
“Cultivator of the organ of fiddlesticks!” replied my mother, somewhat irreverently, “it will tear his pockets to pieces, and I shall not have a decent piece of furniture in the house by the time his holidays are over.”
My mother’s prophetic instinct proved a more correct exponent of the future than the deductions of the philosopher. The only organ the knife cultivated was the organ of destructiveness. Before those ill-fated holidays were over, there was not a cork in the house that was not drawn, nor a door through which the gimlet had not passed. Minute slices were shaved off the angles of the tables and sideboards; crosses were filed in all the door-knobs and bell-pulls. The chairbacks were for the most part ornamented with geometrical tracery, the work, it is needless to say, of the compasses; and my initials, in carving bold and deep, disfigured every wooden surface both in the house and in its immediate vicinity. An attempt to operate with the tweezers upon a stray hair on my father’s face while he was asleep, one afternoon, brought my home-labours in the cause of constructiveness to a close. The knife was impounded, and not returned until the morning on which I again started for school. From that day to this it has never been out of my possession. It has been the companion of my travels half the world over, and though its weight and bulk were rather inconvenient at first, I have found it one of the most useful travelling companions I could possibly possess. But good as it was, it was not perfect. It required repairing now and then, and happening to be in Sheffield on one of these occasions, not long ago, I took it into a shop to have a few blades put in and a few of the tools put in order.
“Whoy, that’s a knoif it oi had a hand i’ the makking ov twenty year sin,” said the old man into whose hand I put it.
“Is it indeed?” I replied. It had never struck me before that the knife had been made. That the buck’s-horn handle once adorned the most graceful of creatures—that the blades had lain deep down in the strata—that the foot-rule had erst grown in the Brazils, and the brush bristled on the back of a wild boar, were thoughts that never entered my mind. Nor had I ever considered what advances must have been made in science and its applications, and how many workmen must have been employed, before these materials could be brought to their present condition. To me the knife had never presented itself in any other shape than that it now bore. That was the shape in which I had received it; that, too, was the shape in which it had always been useful to me. But now there was a new light thrown upon the matter, and as I am naturally of a curious turn of mind, I began asking the old man some questions, which he answered by giving me a note of admittance to one of the largest cutlery manufactories in the town.
I had not time to inspect that manufactory then, but I have now, and if the reader feels inclined to take a run down to Sheffield, or up to Sheffield, or over to Sheffield, as the case may be, I am at his service, and so is my note of admission; it says on the face of it—“admit So-and-so and friends.” So away we go; it may be down the Great Northern, it may be up the Sheffield, Manchester, and Lincolnshire, and it may be along the Midland; but from whatever point we approach Sheffield, we shall be horrified at the first glimpse we catch of it. I said “first glimpse,” because, by a curious combination of circumstances, all the railways converge upon the dirtiest part of the town. But passing along “t’Wicker,” up “t’Waingate,” by “t’Taan’s Hall,” and into “t’High Street,” we find that Sheffield is not so black as it has been painted. Its street architecture, it is true, is not very imposing, but its streets are well paved and well drained, and there is an air of dingy cleanliness about the town that speaks volumes for the efforts of its inhabitants to subdue the necessary dirt by which they are surrounded. But without pausing to look at the