s only just, that you should let me have another
exactly like it; or that you should give me money enough to get it
repaired; or that you should supply me the ten days which I must devote
to replacing it.

W. This is perfectly just. I submit to these conditions. I engage to
return it, or to let you have one like it, or the value of the same. I
think you must be satisfied with this, and can require nothing further.

J. I think otherwise. I made the plane for myself, and not for you. I
expected to gain some advantage from it, by my work being better
finished and better paid, by an improvement in my condition. What reason
is there that I should make the plane, and you should gain the profit? I
might as well ask you to give me your saw and hatchet! What a
confusion! Is it not natural that each should keep what he has made with
his own hands, as well as his hands themselves? To use without
recompense the hands of another, I call slavery; to use without
recompense the plane of another, can this be called fraternity?

W. But, then, I have agreed to return it to you at the end of a year,
as well polished and as sharp as it is now.

J. We have nothing to do with next year; we are speaking of this year.
I have made the plane for the sake of improving my work and condition;
if you merely return it to me in a year, it is you who will gain the
profit of it during the whole of that time. I am not bound to do you
such a service without receiving anything from you in return: therefore,
if you wish for my plane, independently of the entire restoration
already bargained for, you must do me a service which we will now
discuss; you must grant me remuneration.

And this was done thus:--William granted a remuneration calculated in
such a way that, at the end of the year, James received his plane quite
new, and in addition, a compensation, consisting of a new plank, for the
advantages of which he had deprived himself, and which he had yielded to
his friend.

It was impossible for any one acquainted with the transaction to
discover the slightest trace in it of oppression or injustice.

The singular part of it is, that, at the end of the year, the plane came
into James's possession, and he lent it again; recovered it, and lent
it a third and fourth time. It has passed into the hands of his son, who
still lends it. Poor plane! how many times has it changed, sometimes its
blade, sometimes its handle. It is no longer the same plane, but it