56 THE IDYL OF THE SPLIT-BAMBOO 



ing is gluing, winding is winding, and varnishing is 

 varnishing; but most emphatically there are ways, 

 and other ways, of attempting each and all of these 

 things do we not know it! If desirous of get- 

 ting into trouble " right off the reel," take an or- 

 dinary jack-knife and a quarter-section of Tonkin 

 cane and, drawing toward you, just split off nicely 

 and evenly say a three-eighths-inch approximately 

 rectangular strip from its edge just " free and 

 easy like." Try it and see where you arrive. 



But bamboo, either Calcutta or Tonkin, may be 

 split very easily and true, and here is the way to do 

 it. If the reader can improve upon the method or 

 any of the other technic carefully detailed in this 

 book, as later he may, well and good; but take the 

 advice that for the beginner in split-bamboo rod- 

 building, implicit conformity to the instructions of 

 one who has been there spells immunity from the 

 devil of discouragement and failure and hence is al- 

 together the better part of valor. This dose of 

 preventive medicine should suffice. 



Procure from the hardware store a solid-blade 

 better grade knife of the kitchen utility style. The 

 illustration conveys the idea, and the cost will be 

 twenty-five or thirty cents; or a cheap steel-blade 

 table-knife, such as you find in the ten-cent stores, 

 will serve. With the butt-end of the bamboo-stick 

 on the floor and yourself mounted on a chair or 

 a box place the knife-blade across the middle of 



