104 
THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
Three Amateur Workers— and What 
They Did. 
BY FRED. T. HODGSON. 
PERHAPS you know Mr. Carpenter? 
Well, if you do not, let me introduce 
him to you. Here he is. You see at a 
glance, that he is a kind man : fond of 
his three children— Fred, Jessie and Ell- 
wood— who are in return, very much at- 
tached to him. He is a good father ; they 
are good children, and all are equally fond 
of Mamma Carpenter, who thoroughly be- 
lieves there are no children in the world 
so good and so clever as hers ; or a man 
so kind and wise as Papa Carpenter. No 
doubt, you have met Mr. Carpenter be- 
fore, in some place that you cannot now 
call to mind; or, maybe you are ac- 
quainted with the boys— Fred and Ell- 
wood — and it may be that you have seen 
Jessie, or that your sister knows her well. 
At any rate I wish you all to get ac- 
quainted with each other, for if all goes 
well, you will be in each other's company 
quite frequently during the coming 
months, and with your permission I will 
make the necessary formal introductions : 
Mr. Carpenter, permit me to introduce 
the Eeader. Reader, permit me to intro- 
duce Master Fred Carpenter. Miss Jessie 
Carpenter, allow me to introduce the 
Reader. Reader, Master Ellwood .Car- 
penter. Mrs. Carpenter, who is now busy 
superintending the preparations for tea, 
will, at a later period, permit you to be 
introduced to her, and I am sure you will 
never regret it. You no doubt see that 
Fred is about thirteen years old, which he 
will be on his next birthday ; and Jessie, 
the sunbeam of the house, will be eleven 
on the fourth of January next ; and Ell- 
wood, the harum-scarum boy, the plague 
of his sister, the pride of his father, and 
the joy of his mother, has just turned nine, 
and is as mischievous as boys generally 
are at about that age ; but Jessie thinks 
he is "just awful," which I suppose must 
mean something very dreadful, if one may 
judge by the way she expresses it. Fred 
used to be mischievous, but this last year 
or so, since he "passed" for the higher 
school, he has been more staid, and has 
applied himself closer to his studies, much 
more so than he used to do ; and Jessie, 
who, by the way, is a good judge, says he 
is the best boy in the country, and Ma and 
Pa, yes, and Ellwood, too, believe her. 
Fred likes to work with tools; to be 
"making things," fixing up the fence, 
repairing the gates, and mending any- 
thing about the house that may be broken. 
Nothing pleases him better, after he ar- 
rives home from school, than for his Ma 
to ask him to repair some piece of kitchen 
furniture, or for Jessie to entreat him to 
put an arm, leg, or head on her doll, or to 
fix her doll's cradle, chair, or carriage. 
Last Fourth of July, Ellwood wanted him 
to make a wagon; a boy's wagon, you 
know ; one with solid wheels, with holes 
through their centres for axletrees of hard 
wood to go through. Fred went to work 
and made one, but such a wagon ! You 
never saw its like before. Of course it had 
wheels, but such wheels ! They were made 
out of one inch rough boards, and were 
about eight inches in diameter ; they tried 
to be round, but couldn't. When put on 
the axletrees and moved around, they 
wobbled and staggered worse than a paper 
boat would in a mill-race. An empty 
cracker box did service on the two axles 
for a box, and for a time Ellwood was de- 
lighted with it. The first person allowed- 
to ride in it was Jessie, and she was nearly 
as proud of the vehicle as Ellwood him- 
self ; for every one she met that day she 
had to tell them that Fred had just made 
Ellwood a "real nice wagon," and that 
she had had the first ride in it. 
All the tools Fred had to make the 
wagon with were an old rusty saw that he 
found in his father's stable, his father's 
big jack-knife, a gimlet, a hammer, and a 
piece of three-quarter inch round iron 
about two feet long. He used the saw to 
cut out the wheels and axles, of which the 
former was quite a job to do ; he managed 
it, however, by cutting the wheels into 
many-sided polygons, and then whittling 
the corners off afterwards with the jack- 
knife. The gimlet was used for boring 
holes through the bottom of the cracker 
box, so as to fasten it on the two axles 
which it held together; it was also used 
for boring five or six holes through each 
of the wheels in their centres, after which 
