Rollo at Play; Or, Safe Amusements

One pleasant morning in the autumn, when Rollo was about five years old, he was sitting on the platform, behind his father\'s house, playing. He had a hammer and nails, and some small pieces of board. He was trying to make a box. He hammered and hammered, and presently he dropped his work down and said, fretfully, "O dear me!" "What is the matter, Rollo?" said Jonas,—for it happened that Jonas was going by just then, with a wheelbarrow. "I wish these little boards would not split so. I cannot make my box." "You drive the nails wrong; you put the wedge sides with the grain." "The wedge sides!" said Rollo; "what are the wedge sides,—and the grain? I do not know what you mean." But Jonas went on, trundling his wheelbarrow; though he looked round and told Rollo that he could not stop to explain it to him then. Rollo was discouraged about his box. He thought he would look and see what Jonas was going to do. Jonas trundled the wheelbarrow along, until he came opposite the barn-door, and there he put it down. He went into the barn, and presently came out with an axe. Then he took the sides of the wheelbarrow off, and placed them up against the barn.