He could not sell one of his
hand-made guns for half as much as it cost him, nor does he seem to want
to sell them, preferring rather to have them stand in the corner of his
shop where he can look at them. His is the incorruptible spirit of the
artist!
What a tremendous power there is in work. Carlstrom worked. He was up
early in the morning to work, and he worked in the evening as long as
daylight lasted, and once I found him in his shop in the evening,
bending low over his bench with a kerosene lamp in front of him. He was
humming his inevitable tune and smoothing off with a fine file the nice
curves of a rifle trigger. When he had trouble--and what a lot of it he
has had in his time!--he worked; and when he was happy he worked all the
harder. All the leisurely ones of the town drifted by, all the children
and the fools, and often rested in the doorway of his shop. He made them
all welcome: he talked with them, but he never stopped working. Clang,
clang, would go his anvil, whish, whish, would respond his bellows,
creak, creak, would go the hickory sweep--he was helping the world go
round!
All this time, though he had sickness in his family, though his wife
died, and then his children one after another until only one now
remains, he worked and he saved.
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