elder Jarvis as he stood in the melting, soot-powdered
snow in front of his shop, and hear his comments on my pertinacity.

"If you ever wants another man's missus when you grows up, my lad, Gawd
'elp 'im!"

"Why should I want another man's wife when I don't want one of my own?" I
demanded, indignant.

He laughed with his customary lack of moderation.

"You mind what old Jarvis says," he cried. "What you wants, you gets."

I did get his boards, by sheer insistence. No doubt they were not very
valuable, and without question he more than made up for them in my
mother's bill. I also got something else of equal value to me at the
moment,--the assistance of Grits, the contraband; daily, after school, I
smuggled him into the shed through the alley, acquiring likewise the
services of Tom Peters, which was more of a triumph than it would seem.
Tom always had to be "worked up" to participation in my ideas, but in the
end he almost invariably succumbed. The notion of building a boat in the
dead of winter, and so far from her native element, naturally struck him
at first as ridiculous. Where in Jehoshaphat was I going to sail it if I
ever got it made? He much preferred to throw snowballs at innocent wagon
drivers.

All that Tom saw, at first, was a dirty, coal-spattered shed with dim
recesses, for it was lighted on one side only, and its temperature was
somewhere below freezing. Surely he could not be blamed for a tempered
enthusiasm! But for me, all the dirt and cold and discomfort were blotted
out, and I beheld a gallant craft manned by sturdy seamen forging her way
across blue water in the South Seas. Treasure Island, alas, was as yet
unwritten; but among my father's books were two old volumes in which I
had hitherto taken no interest, with crude engravings of palms and coral
reefs, of naked savages and tropical mountains covered with jungle, the
adventures, in brief, of one Captain Cook. I also discovered a book by a
later traveller. Spurred on by a mysterious motive power, and to the
great neglect of the pons asinorum and the staple products of the
Southern States, I gathered an amazing amount of information concerning a
remote portion of the globe, of head-hunters and poisoned stakes, of
typhoons, of queer war-craft that crept up on you while you were
dismantling galleons, when desperate hand-to-hand encounters ensued.
Little by little as I wove all this into personal adventures soon to be
realized, Tom forgot the snow