66 FLIGHT FROM THE CITY 



board which served a functional purpose in our lives. 

 The satisfaction of standing off and looking at it when 

 the last stroke of the paint-brush had been laid upon 

 it was emotionally much the same thing felt by 

 an artist when surveying a painting which he had 

 finally finished. The creative artist and the creative 

 carpenter are brothers under the skin. Creating and 

 making things has its pains, no doubt, but it has 

 pleasures so great that they offset the pains. 



One dividend upon which we had not counted was 

 the discovery that the right kind of machines often 

 made up for the lack of skill and the lack of strength 

 of an inexperienced craftsman such as myself. A 

 concrete-mixer can furnish the strength for mixing 

 sand and stone and cement to a man who ordinarily 

 never does any work heavier than shoving a pen across 

 the papers on a desk. And an electric saw can furnish 

 him the skill to make a square and plumb cut on a 

 rafter which he might never be able to acquire with 

 a hand saw. 



Out of this discovery grew our workshop, equipped 

 with all sorts of power-driven machines which fur- 

 nished skill, supplied strength, and saved labor. In 

 spite of the fact that in my case I had to start with 

 zero in the way of experience in buying tools and 

 machines, most of the purchases made for the shop 

 have proved to be paying investments. I use the term 

 workshop symbolically rather than geographically, 

 for many kinds of work are done and many of our 

 tools are kept outside of the workshop itself. Our shop 



