insides are dealt with on fitting slips, which may be easily adapted to
the purpose by application to a grindstone, the outsides are not so
difficult to manage, so that grooved stones may be dispensed with.

Before we leave the subject of sharpening tools it will be well to
impress upon the beginner the extreme importance of keeping his tools in
good order. When a tool is really sharp it whistles as it works; a dull
tool makes dull work, and the carver loses both time and temper. There
can be no doubt that the great technical skill shown in the works of
Grinling Gibbons and his followers could not have been arrived at
without the help of extraordinarily sharp tools. Tools not merely
sharpened and then used until they became dull, but tools that were
always sharp, and never allowed to approach dullness. Sharpening tools
is indeed an art in itself, and like other arts has its votaries, who
successfully conquer its difficulties with apparent ease, while others
are baffled at every point. Impatience is the stumbling-block in such
operations. Those most painstaking people, the Chinese, according to all
accounts, put magic into their sharpening stones; the keenness of their
blades being only equaled by that of their wits in all such matters of
delicate application. To make a good beginning is a great point gained.
To carefully examine every tool, and at the expense of time correct the
faults of management, is the only way to become expert in sharpening
tools.

CHAPTER VI

CHIP CARVING

Its Savage Origin--A Clue to its only Claim to Artistic
Importance--Monotony better than Variety--An Exercise in Impatience
and Precision--Technical Methods.

One of the simplest forms of wood-carving is that known as "chip"
carving. This kind of work is by no means of modern origin, as its
development may be traced to a source in the barbaric instinct for
decoration common to the ancient inhabitants of New Zealand and other
South Sea Islands. Technically, and with modern tools, it is a form of
the art which demands but little skill, save in the matter of precision
and patient repetition. As practised by its savage masters, the
perfection of these two qualities elevates their work to the dignity of
a real art. It is difficult to conceive the contradictory fact, that
this apparently simple form of art was once the exponent of a struggling
desire for refinement on the part of fierce and warlike men, and that it
shou