Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1870 — The Carpenter. [ARTICLE]

The Carpenter.

BY THB “ FAT CONTRIBUTOR.” Bbsidbs being a very useful, we might say an indispensable, man in the community, we look upon the carpenter as a soother and a peace maker, for after the architect has formed ofttimes wicked designs upon your house, and puzzled you with the Corinthian, the lonic, the Doric, proto Doric and hunki-Doric; bewildered you among porticos and columns, and foliated capitals, and entablatures, and architraves, and flutes and cornices, and pilasters and facades, and exasperated you with his sprandrils, and traceries, and cinque centos, and corbels, and trefoils, and pendentives, and other architechnicalities you don’t know anything at all about, the carpenter steps in and puts your house in a good frame—makes everything plane, as it were, with the addition, perhaps, of his square, chalk-line and scratch-awl, ads, saw and a few other trifling articles from his tool-chest Without the carpenter to plan and put together, your house would be in no-frame to receive the joiner and the paper-hang-er, and various other representatives of the mechanic arts, who are dependent upon his movements. Bo you see the important position he fills. Although nothing but a mechanic, yet the carpenter is admitted into our very best houses, and is often consulted regarding their arrangements. The rich and the proud, who live in “stuck-up" houses, have to get the carpenter to stick ’em up. The carpenter gets up a great many stories on such people. We have known him to get up five stories and a Mansard roof. Carpenters have a knack of accumulating. There is a Carpenters’ Shavings Bank back of nearly every carpenter shop, where they deposit" their shavings. The poor are often allowed to draw on that bank (if they don’t draw off a wagon-load), and no interest charged. Little shavers are not considered of much account among carpenters, as this is a profession in which a workman is known by his shavings. , ' The carpenter is charitably disposed toward his fellows. He is not looking for a mote in his brother’s optic, because there is usually a beam, or at least a scantling, in his own eye, so, if by chance he should discover the mote, he would simply remark, “So mote it be." * Several distinguished men began their career as carpenters. There was the “ Carpenter of Rouen.” We don’t know how he happened to be in ruin, but think it was through drink. Then there is Mr. Carpenter, of the celebrated and wellknown firm of Carpenter & Joiner, whose Joint transactions are carried on all over the world; and there is Matt Carpenter, Senator from Wisconsin, who don’t frame buildings, but who helps frame laws. Carpenters are a hard-working, industrious set of men, and probably do more than any other class, unless we except the bricklayers, to build up a city. Don’t carp at the carpenter.—Cincinnati Times