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- Herausgeber: Krill Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Seitenzahl: 137
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THE DOERS
William John Hopkins
DOSSIER PRESS
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This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2016 by William John Hopkins
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I: THE DIGGING-MEN STORY
II: THE MASON STORY
III: THE DINNER-TIME AND JONAH STORY
IV: THE CARPENTER STORY
V: THE WATER-MEN STORY
VI: THE SHINGLE AND CLAPBOARD STORY
VII: THE PLUMBER STORY
VIII: THE PAINTER STORY
IX: THE TREE-MEN STORY
X: THE CLEARING-UP STORY
XI: THE SETTING-OUT STORY
XII: THE POLE-MEN STORY
XIII: THE MOVING-MEN STORY
The Doers
By
William John Hopkins
The Doers
Published by Dossier Press
New York City, NY
First published circa 1926
Copyright © Dossier Press, 2015
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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I: THE DIGGING-MEN STORY
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE was a little boy who was almost five years old. And his mother used to let him wander about the garden and in the road near the house, for there weren’t many horses going by, and the men who drove the horses that did go by knew the little boy and they were careful.
So this boy wandered about and played happily by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls. And wherever he went his cat went too.
One morning he saw some men come with a big cart and two horses, and they stopped in a field near his house where there were some queer boards nailed on sticks that were stuck in the ground; and the boards turned corners, and there were strings across from one board to another.
And the men got out of the big cart and unhitched the horses from the cart, and the little boy thought he had better go there and see what they were going to do.
So he went, dragging his cart behind him, with his shovel and his hoe rattling in the bottom of it.
And his cat saw him going, and she ran on ahead with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.
And the little boy came to the men and the horses and he stopped and stood still.
And his cat stopped too, but she didn’t stand still; she rolled over on her back on the ground and wanted to play, but nobody would pay any attention to her.
Pretty soon one of the men looked down and saw the little boy.
“Hello!” he said.
“Hello,” said the little boy. “What are you going to do?”
“Why,” said the man, “we’re going to dig dirt.”
“Are you going to dig a hole?” the little boy asked.
“Yes,” said the man; “a great big hole.”
“And what is the hole for?” the little boy asked. “Is it to plant something in?”
“No,” said the man, “it’s going to be the cellar of a house.”
“Oh,” said the little boy, “is it? And do you think I could help you dig? I’ve got my shovel and my cart.”
“I’m afraid,” said the man, “that it wouldn’t do. You see that great scoop?”
He pointed to a big iron scoop that was in the cart.
The little boy looked and nodded.
“Is that a scoop? What is it for?”
“The horses drag it, and a man takes hold of those two handles like plough-handles, and it scoops the dirt right up.”
The little boy nodded again.
“You can watch us if you want to,” the man said then. “But you must be careful not to get in the way of the horses.”
“And can my kitty watch too?”
The man laughed and said his kitty could watch if she wanted to.
And the other men took pickaxes out of the cart, the handles of the pickaxes and their iron heads, and each man slipped the head of his pickaxe over the handle and gave it a tap on the ground to drive the head on.
And they walked slowly in under the strings between the boards and they got in a line.
And the little boy sat down on a stone that was just the right size and watched them. His cat came and got right between his feet.
Then the man at the end of the line raised his pickaxe high above his head, and the next man did the same, and then the third man, and so on to the other end of the line.
And the first man struck his pickaxe down hard into the ground, and it made the ground grunt, Mnh!
And the second man did the same, and the ground gave another grunt, Mnh!
And then the third man did the same thing, and so on to the other end of the line.
Then the first man was ready again, so that the sound of the pickaxes was as regular as the ticking of the tall clock.
When the pickaxe was in the ground, each man gave a kind of a pry that loosened the dirt.
And when they had picked, the men went ahead a little short step and picked a new place and left the loosened dirt behind, so that, pretty soon, they were walking on the dirt that they had loosened.
The cat had got tired of lying between the little boy’s feet and having no attention paid to her, so she got up and ran off a little way, and stopped and looked back, but the little boy wouldn’t look.
So she walked back, with her bushy tail straight up in the air, and rubbed against the little boy’s legs.
Still the little boy didn’t notice her. And the reason why he didn’t notice her was that the horses were being hitched to the big iron scoop.
As soon as the horses were hitched to the scoop, they started walking along; and the scoop turned right over on its face, upside down, because the man didn’t have hold of the handles.
And the horses dragged the scoop, upside down, and it bumped over the stones and made a ringing kind of noise, and they dragged it in between the boards and over the dirt that had been loosened by the pickaxes, and when they got to the end of the loosened dirt, they stopped.
THE DIRT-SCOOP
THE DIRT-SCOOP
Then the man turned the horses around, and he took hold of the handles of the scoop and turned it over; and he kept hold of the handles, and the horses started, and the scoop dug into the loose dirt and scooped it right up and carried it along.
Now the field, where they were digging the cellar, sloped down behind where the cellar was to be, so that, when the horses came to that part, they were walking down-hill.
And the man let go of the handles of the scoop, and it turned over and dumped its load of dirt.
And when the horses heard the scoop bumping and banging on the ground, they turned around of their own accord and walked back to get a new load.
And so they did until they had scooped out all the dirt that had been loosened.
Then the pickaxe men went back and began again on the part that had been scooped, but the horses had to wait for the dirt to be loosened, and they stood outside of the cellar.
It was beginning to look a little bit like a cellar now, but a very shallow one.
And the little boy was getting tired of watching the pickaxes rise and fall and of listening to the noise the ground made. So he got up.
And his cat saw him getting up, and she ran to him, and she saw that he was going to the man with the horses, so she ran ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.
The man saw them coming, and he looked at the little boy and smiled.
“I’ve got to go now,” the little boy said, when he had come to the man.
“So soon?” asked the man. “I hope you aren’t tired.”
“I think I’d better go home,” the little boy said. “P’r’aps my mother would like to see me.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if she’d like to see you pretty often,” the man said. “You tell her that you’ll be safe here. I’ll keep my eye on you.”
“How will you get your eye on me?” the little boy asked.
The man laughed. “Will you come again?”
“I’ll come to-morrow,” the little boy said. “P’r’aps I’ll come this afternoon. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said the man.
And he watched the little boy as he trudged away, dragging his cart, with his hoe and his shovel rattling in the bottom of it, and with his cat walking beside him and looking up into his face.
And that’s all of this story.
II: THE MASON STORY
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE was a little boy and he was almost five years old. And there weren’t any other children near for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls.
One morning he was sitting right down in the gravel of his front walk, the walk that led to the front door of the house that he lived in, and he had been digging in the gravel. The hole that he was digging was square.
And he had picked the dirt all over with a big nail, and pried it loose, and then he had pretended that his shovel was a big iron scoop that could scoop the dirt out just the way the big scoop did when it was dragged by the horses.
For he had been watching the men dig a cellar in the field next to his house.
And his cat was there, rolling in the gravel and playing with the air.
Pretty soon his mother looked out of a window, and then she came running out.
“My dear little boy,” she said, “what are you digging?”
The little boy got up, and the cat scampered away a few feet, with her bushy tail straight up in the air.
“I’m digging a cellar for a house,” said the little boy.
“Oh,” said his mother. “Well, don’t you think you’d better build the house over near the sand-pile? People coming in might not see this house, and they might kick it over and walk on it. But the masons have come to work on the real cellar.”
“The masons?” the little boy asked.
“The men to build the cellar wall. You may go and watch them if you like.”
The little boy nodded again. Then he put his shovel into his cart, and took hold of the handle of the cart. Then he looked back.
“Good-bye,” he said.
“Good-bye, my dear little son,” his mother said.
And she watched him trudging away, dragging his cart, with his shovel and his hoe rattling in the bottom of it.
And his cat ran on ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.
The little boy saw a man hoeing slowly at something in a big shallow wooden box.
And the something that he was hoeing at was all white and it slopped here and there; and the hoe was all white, and the outside of the box was all covered with slops of the same white stuff, and the man’s shoes were white, too, and the bottoms of his overalls.
And there was a pile of new sand that looked all moist and just right to play in.
There was another man standing at the edge of the cellar and looking down into it.
The cellar itself was so deep now that the little boy could just see the tops of the hats of the men who were working in it.
The man who had been looking down into the cellar heard the shovel and the hoe rattling in the cart and looked up.
“Hello!” he called.
“Hello,” said the little boy. “What are you doing?”
“I’m just looking to see if the men do their work right. Come over here and I’ll show you.”
So the little boy left his cart beside the pile of sand and walked over to where the man was.
And the man met him and took hold of his hand; and they walked together to the edge of the cellar and looked down into it, and the man stooped down and kneeled on one knee, with his arm half around the little boy so that he wouldn’t fall in.
In the cellar the little boy saw a great many big stones that lay all about the middle, where they had been dumped; and there were six men working around the edge of the cellar building the wall.
In part of the cellar the wall had been begun and was about two feet high; but in another part there was nothing but the smooth dirt at the bottom, and the smooth sides of the cellar that went straight up.
And two of the men were digging a trench in the smooth bottom of the cellar where the wall would be.
When they had the shallow trench dug for a few feet, one of the men put down his shovel and went to the pile of stones.
And he found some stones that were the size he wanted, each of them just about as big as he could carry in one hand. And he took two of these and went to the trench and put them in.
Then he went to the pile and got two more, and he put them in the trench, too. And so he did until the bottom of the trench was all covered.
Then he got smaller stones and threw them in on top of the bigger ones; and, on top of those, still smaller stones that were flattish.
The flat stones filled the trench up nearly to the top, and he didn’t put in any more but took up his shovel again and helped the other man dig.
Then two of the other men came, and they looked at the trench to see if it was all right.
Then they went to the pile of big stones and they picked out one of the biggest, and they took their big iron crowbars and put the points of the bars under the stone, to move it.
The little boy wondered.
“What are they going to do?” he asked. “Are they going to move it? Can they move it?”
The man nodded.
“Easy enough,” he said. “You watch.”
And the men pried with their crowbars, and the big stone started from its place and rolled down from the pile. And the men got it over to the trench, sometimes prying it with their crowbars and sometimes rolling it with their hands, and they set it in its place on top of the small flat stones.
