I scarcely needed the prompting of the Scotch Preacher, for Carlstrom's
gunshop has for years been one of the most interesting places in town
for me. I went to it now with a new understanding.
Afar off I began to listen for Carlstrom's hammer, and presently I heard
the familiar sounds. There were two or three mellow strokes, and I knew
that Carlstrom was making the sparks fly from the red iron. Then the
hammer rang, and I knew he was striking down on the cold steel of the
anvil. It is a pleasant sound to hear.
Carlstrom's shop is just around the corner from the main street. You may
know it by a great weather-beaten wooden gun fastened over the doorway,
pointing in the daytime at the sky, and in the night at the stars. A
stranger passing that way might wonder at the great gun and possibly say
to himself:
"A gunshop! How can a man make a living mending guns in such a peaceful
community!"
Such a remark merely shows that he doesn't know Carlstrom, nor the shop,
nor _us_.
I tied my horse at the corner and went down to the shop with a peculiar
new interest. I saw as if for the first time the old wheels which have
stood weathering so long at one end of the building. I saw under the
shed at the other end the wonderful assortment of old iron pipes,
kettles, tires, a pump or two, many parts of farm machinery, a broken
water wheel, and I don't know what other flotsam of thirty years of
diligent mending of the iron works of an entire community.
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