An Artist
Old W. stopped and watched me working with , a pair of garden shears. He was interested not in what I was doing but in the working of the shears. Could he see them he asked. I handed them over. W. worked them in his hands, squinted along the blades, eyed the handles and remarked that the setting of these was a shade out. They wcrb not easy to the natural movement. I didn't disputo this, for W. is an old blacksmith and one of the best of his time. Everything he does with tools advertises him as a born tradesman. A man either has this thing about him or be has not. W. spoke of the smiths he had known and went on to give me an instance of his finding a chisel on a certain job. I told them it was mine,' he said, for it was made to my hand. I didn't need to put my name on it. I could have told it was mine if I had picked it up in a coal cellar at midnight.' I believed him, for such a first-class tradesman knows his tools as no one else can.
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