The Burning of the Tool-House
When one has committed a fault, to acknowledge it frankly, and to bear the consequences of it one’s self submissively, is magnanimous and noble. On the contrary, to resort to cunning tricks to conceal it, and especially to attempt to throw the blame of it upon others who are innocent, is mean and contemptible.
Description of the tool-house. Thomas, the gardener.
Once there were two boys, named William and John, who had a building for a tool-house and work-shop at the bottom of their father’s garden. It was very similar in its situation to the one described in the last story. The building was at a place where the land descended, so that while it was only one story high on the front side toward the garden, it was two stories high on the other side toward a brook, which ran along near the lower garden fence. The upper part of the building was the tool-room. This room opened out upon one of the alleys of the garden. The lower part was the shop. The door leading into the shop was behind. There was a fire-place in the shop, and the chimney passed up, of course, through the tool-room; but there was no fire-place in the tool-room, for there never was any occasion to make a fire there. The only use of that room was, that Thomas, the old gardener, used to keep his spades, and rakes, and hoes, and other garden tools in it; and sometimes of a summer evening, when his work was done, he used to sit at the door of it and smoke his pipe. The building was very convenient, though it was small, and old, and so not of much value.
In the winter, the boys were accustomed occasionally to have a fire in the work-shop below, when they were at work there. There was not much danger in this, for the floor of the room was of stone.
Sealing the packages.
In the summer, of course, they never required a fire, except when they wished to use the glue. Then they were accustomed to make a small fire to dissolve the glue. One summer morning, however, they wanted a candle. They had been collecting garden seeds, and they wished to seal them up in small packages with sealing-wax. It would have been better, perhaps, to have tied the parcels up with twine; but the boys took a fancy to using sealing-wax, for the sake of the interest and pleasure which they expected to find in the work of sealing. So, just before noon, when they had got their seeds all ready, William went up to the house, and his mother gave him a long candle.
When William came into the shop, John accosted him, saying,
The boys have no candlestick.
“Why, William, you have not brought any candlestick. What shall we do for a candlestick?”
“I forgot that,” said William.
“Never mind,” said John; “we can make one with a block and three nails.”
There is a way of making a candlestick in a shop, which consists of driving three nails into a small block of wood, at such a distance apart as to leave just space for the end of the candle between them. If the nails are driven into the block in a proper manner, and if the heads of the nails are not too large, this contrivance makes quite a good candlestick.
Another way is to take a similar block of wood, and bore a hole in the top of it just large enough to receive the end of the candle, and just deep enough to hold it firmly.
William proposed that they should make the candlestick by boring a hole, but John thought it was best to do it by means of nails.
The two candlesticks.
So they concluded to make two. John was to make one with nails, and William one with the borer. So they both began to look about among the shavings under the bench for blocks, and when they found two that seemed to answer their purpose, William went to a drawer, and selected a borer of the proper size, while John began to choose nails with small heads out of a nail-box which was upon the bench for his operation.
In due time the candlesticks were both finished. The one which William had made was really the best; but John insisted that the one which he had made was the best, and so William, who was a very good-natured boy, gave up the point. The candle was put into John’s candlestick, and William put his away upon a shelf, to be used, perhaps, on some future occasion. The boys then lighted the candle by means of a match, and put it on the end of the work-bench where they were going to do the work of putting up their seeds.
The boys leave the candle burning.
It was now, however, about noon, which was the hour for the boys to go home to dinner. They arranged their seeds a little upon the bench, but did not have time to begin to seal them up before they heard the dinner-bell ring. They then left their work, and went up to the house. Unfortunately, they left the candle burning. As it was bright daylight, and especially as the sun shone in near where the candle stood, the flame was very faint to the view; in fact, it was almost entirely invisible, and the boys, when they looked around the shop just before they left it, did not observe it at all.
After dinner, the boys concluded that they would go a fishing that afternoon, and not finish putting up their seeds until the following day.
The matting. The pipe.
While they were gone, the candle was burning all the time, the flame gradually descending as the combustion went on, until, about tea-time, it reached the block of wood. It did not set the wood on fire, but the wick fell over, when the flame reached the wood, and communicated the fire to a roll of matting which lay upon the bench behind it. The matting had been used to wrap up plants in, and was damp; so it burned very slowly. About this time, Thomas, the old gardener, came and sat down in the doorway of the tool-house above, smoking his pipe. He did not know, however, what mischief was brewing in the room below; and so, when it began to grow dark, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe upon the ground of the garden, shut the tool-room door, and went home.
Fire! fire!
That night, about midnight, the boys were suddenly awakened and dreadfully terrified by a cry of fire, and, on opening their eyes, they perceived a strong light gleaming into the windows of their bed-room. They sprang up, and saw that the tool-house was all on fire. The people of the house dressed themselves as quick as possible, and hastened to the spot, and some of the neighbors came too. It was, however, too late to extinguish the fire. The building and all the tools which it contained, both in the tool-room and in the shop, and all the seeds that the boys had collected were entirely consumed.
Nobody could imagine how the building took fire. Some said it must have been set on fire by malicious persons. Others thought that old Thomas must have been unconsciously the author of the mischief, with his pipe. Nothing certain, however, could be ascertained at that time, and so the company separated, determining to have the matter more fully investigated the following morning.
William and John, who had dressed themselves when the alarm was first given, and had gone to the fire, now went back to their room, and went to bed again.
What was the origin of the fire? A conversation.
After they had been in bed some time, and each thought that the other must be asleep, William said to John,
“John!”
“What?” said John.
“Are you asleep?” asked William.
“No,” said John.
“I will tell you how I think the tool-house got on fire,” said William.
“How?” asked John.
“Why, I believe we left our candle burning there,” replied William.
“Yes,” said John, “I thought of that myself.”
Here there was a little pause.
Presently John said,
“I don’t suppose that they will know that our candle set it on fire.”
“No,” said William, “unless we tell them.”
The conversation continued.
“They will suppose, I expect,” added John, “that Thomas set it on fire with his pipe.”
“Yes,” said William, “perhaps they will.”
Here there was another pause.
The boys hesitate.
“Unless,” continued John, after reflecting on the subject a little while in silence, “unless mother should remember that she gave us the candle, and ask us about it.”
“We could say,” he added again, “that we did not go into the shop any time in the afternoon or evening. That would be true.”
“Yes,” said William. “We did not go into it at all after we went home to dinner.”
The boys remained silent a few minutes after this, when John, who felt still quite uneasy in mind on the subject, said again,
“I expect that father would be very much displeased with us if he knew that we set the tool-house on fire, for it has burned up all his tools.”
“Yes,” said William.
“And I suppose he would punish us in some way or other,” added John.
“Yes,” said William, “I think it very likely that he would.”
“But then, John,” continued William, “I don’t think it would be right to let Thomas bear the blame of setting the tool-house on fire, when we are the ones that did it.”
John was silent.
“I think we had better go and tell father all about it the first thing to-morrow morning.”
“We shall get punished if we do,” said John.
“Well,” said William, “I don’t care. I had rather be punished than try to keep it secret. If we try to keep it secret, and let Thomas bear the blame, we shall be miserable about it for a long time, and feel guilty or ashamed whenever we meet father or Thomas. I had rather be punished at once and have it done with.”
“Let us tell father.”
“Well,” said John, “let us tell father. We will tell him the first thing to-morrow morning.”
The affair being thus arranged, the boys ceased talking about it, and shut up their eyes to go to sleep. After a few minutes, however, William spoke to his brother again.
“John,” said he, “I think I could go to sleep better if I should go and tell father now all about it. I don’t suppose that he is asleep yet.”
“Well,” said John, “go and tell him.”
So William got up out of his bed, and went to the door of his father’s room. He knocked at the door, and his father said “Come in.” William opened the door. His father was in bed, and there was no light in the room, except a dim night-lamp that was burning on a table.
The explanation.
“Father,” said William, “I came to tell you that I suppose I know how our tool-house caught on fire.”
“How was it?” asked his father.
“Why, John and I had a candle there before dinner, and I believe we left it burning; and so I suppose that, when it burned down, it set the bench on fire.”
“That could not have been the way,” said his father, “for, when it got down to the candlestick, it would go out.”
“But there was not any candlestick,” said William, “only a wooden one, which we made out of a block and three nails.”
“Oh! that was the way, was it?” said his father. “Indeed!”
Here there was a short pause. William waited to hear what his father would say next.
“Well, William,” said his father, at length, “you are a very good boy to come and tell me. Now go back to your bed, and go to sleep. We will see all about it in the morning.”
So William went out; but, just as he was shutting the door, his father called to him again.
“William!” said he.
“What, sir?” said William.
“Get up as early as you can to-morrow morning, and go to Thomas’s, and tell him how it was. He thinks that he must have set the tool-house on fire, and he is quite troubled about it.”
“Yes, sir, I will,” said William.
Then he went back to his room, and reported to John what he had done, and what his father had said. The boys were both very much relieved in mind from having made their confession.
“I am very glad I told him,” said William; “and now I only wish I could tell Thomas about it without waiting till morning.”
“So do I,” said John.
“But we can’t,” said William, “so now we will go to sleep. But we will get up, and go to his house the first thing in the morning.”
The boys get up early to explain the accident to Thomas.
This the boys did. Thomas’s mind was very much relieved when he heard their story. He went directly into the house to tell his wife, who, as well as himself, had been very anxious about the origin of the fire. When he came out, he told the boys that he was very much obliged to them for coming to tell him about it so early. “In fact,” said he, “I think it is very generous and noble in you to take the blame of the fire upon yourselves, instead of letting it rest upon innocent people. There are very few boys that would have done so.”
The final result.
William and John were fortunately disappointed in their expectations that they would have to suffer some punishment for their fault. In fact, they were not even reproved. They told their father all about it at breakfast, and he said that, though it certainly was not a prudent thing for boys to trust themselves with a wooden candlestick in a shop full of wood and shavings, still he did not think that they deserved any particular censure for having made one. “The whole thing was one of those accidents which will sometimes occur,” said he, “and you need not think any thing more about it. I will have a new tool-house and shop built pretty soon, and will make it better than the old one was. And now, after breakfast, you may go down and rake over the ashes, and see if you can rake out any of the remains of the garden tools.”
An important principle.
It would have been better for the story if it had happened that the boys, in setting fire to the tool-house, had really been guilty of some serious fault, for which they were afterward to be punished; for the nobleness and magnanimity which are displayed in confessing a fault, are so much the greater when the person confessing occasions himself suffering by it.