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- Now that my grandfather's little shop is on my mind, perhaps you will be patient with me if I say something more about it; for I'm afraid that if I don't tell you now I may forget to do it later.
When I was a small boy (about nine, let us say) and we visited Grandma Cassel, the shop was still there and in active operation. My bachelor uncle, Worth Cassel, had fallen heir to it, which was quite right, for he was the only child left at home to look after his mother. He had also inherited his father's talent for skilled carpentry.
When we visited there, usually in midsummer, Uncle Worth, whom I adored, would take an afternoon off and devote his time to me. After dinner at eleven-thirty, he would unlock the trim little shop with a big iron key while I waited beside him, quivering with excitement. The place was dominated by a frighteningly large wooden flywheel overhead, high above the lathe on which my tall, curly-headed, soft-spoken uncle would turn out beautiful little tops and cups and saucers and napkin rings from selected pieces of oak and walnut.
There is no aroma more heady than the scent of hot walnut shavings. The sharp chisels squealed and turned blue as they bit into the hard knots that were to furnish the completed product with its exquisite graining.
(Ah?those irrecoverable scents that distinguished "the old home" from all other places in the world; the peculiar fragrance of the tortured walnut ribbons in the enchanted shop, the perfume of the little beds of mint and anise in the garden, the pungent smell of the old smokehouse, behind the kitchen, where many a ham and side of bacon had hung for days on end over an open barrel of smouldering hickory coals. Yes, and if you will believe it, the half-elusive aroma of the long-abandoned stable; it, too, was of the fragile fabric that summer dreams are made of.)
I often wished that Uncle Worth would let me help push the treadle that operated the big flywheel. Once I ventured to ask him but he shook his head.
"You don't want to get your foot mashed, do you? "
And, of course, I didn't. So we left it at that. I did not debate the matter. It was not customary with us to tease for things. When any of our elders and betters said No, we never objected; much less persisted by inquiring whether our objection was sustained or overruled. [1]
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