straw" in Virginia means a tall grass of the prairie grass kind, which grows thickly in every open space. In winter it is dry and nothing makes a sweeter smelling bed.
The boys were tired after their hard day's work, but their enthusiasm instantly outvoted their weariness, for their proceedings had not yet lost the character of a sort of frolic in their minds.
"Besides," said little Tom as the supper drew to an end, "I for one am not half as tired as I was when we sat down to eat."
"Naturally not," said the Doctor.
"But why is it?" asked Tom. "I don't see how I have got rested so soon."
"You've fired up," replied the Doctor. "Did you ever see an engine that worked badly for want of steam? Did you ever observe what the engineer does in that case?"
"Yes, of course; he sets the stoker to firing up under the boiler. But what has that to do with getting tired and getting rested again? I don't see the connection."
"Yet it is clear enough," the Doctor responded. "The human system is a machine. It must have energy or force or whatever you choose to call it, to enable it to do its work. Now an engine gets its energy from the coal or wood burned under its boiler. This human machine derives its energy solely from food put into the stomach. When you are tired it means simply that your supply of physical force has run low. When you eat you replenish the supply, just as firing up does it for the engine."
"But Doctor," said Jack with an accent of puzzled inquiry, "how about those people that are always tired – 'born tired' as they say? They eat, but they never get over being tired."
"Dyspeptics, every one of them," replied the Doctor. "It doesn't help an engine to shovel coal into its furnace if the coal doesn't burn. In the same way it doesn't strengthen a man to eat unless he digests and assimilates his food."
"Well now, if you people have sufficiently assimilated your food and your ideas," broke in little Tom, "let's get to work."
Some of the boys pulled the grass and piled it in rude shocks. The others carried it to the hut and bestowed it in one corner, ready for use. As they carried on the work the moon slowly went out, and just as they were finishing it, Jim Chenowith called out:
"There's the snow," and very gently the flakes began descending. "Jack you're a good weather prophet, and this time it's lucky for us that you are. Otherwise we should have had wet broom straw to sleep on all winter. By the way, how are we going to arrange our beds?"
"Why, we'll build a platform of small poles along the eastern wall of our house – the fireplace being on the western side. We'll divide this platform into compartments, each to serve as a bed. We'll lay clapboards on the poles to make a smooth surface, and on them we'll pile all the broom straw we've got. Then we'll wrap ourselves in our blankets and crawl in. Do you see?"
"Yes, but how about the fellows that must sleep under the Doctor's muslin window?" asked Harry. "Won't they sleep pretty cold, Doctor?"
"I don't think so," answered the Doctor. "The windows will keep out the cold quite as well as the logs themselves do."
"But how can they? How can two thin sheets of muslin keep cold out or heat in, which I believe is the better way of putting it?" asked Harry.
"They can't," answered the Doctor. "Bring those two sheets of muslin together and they would let heat out and cold in as freely almost as an open hole does. It isn't the muslin that keeps the cold out or the heat in – which ever way you choose to put it. It is the imprisoned air between the two pieces of muslin. There is hardly anywhere a worse conductor of heat than confined air. That is why in building fire proof structures in the great cities they use hollow bricks for partition walls. No amount of heat on one side can pass through the confined air in the bricks and set fire to anything on the other side of the wall. In the contracts for such buildings it is often stipulated that the owner shall be free to build as hot a bonfire as he pleases in any room he may select, and if it sets fire to anything in any other room the contractor shall pay a heavy penalty."
"But where did you get your idea of greased muslin windows, Doctor?" asked Jack. "I never heard of it before."
"I got it by reading history," answered the Doctor. "In old English times nobody but princes could afford to use glass. Its cost was too great. And then later, when glass became cheaper, a stupid government put a tax on windows, and so men went on using greased cloth instead of glass in order to get the light of heaven into their habitations without having their substance eaten up by a window tax."
"But why was it 'stupid' as you say for the government to raise revenue by so simple a means as that of taxing windows?" asked Jack.
"Because governments exist for the good of the people governed, and not the reverse of that. Otherwise no government would have any right to exist at all. A window tax discourages the use of windows. As a result the people live in darkness and foul air, which is not good for them. But governments in the old days assumed not that the government existed for the good of the people, but that the people existed for the good of the government. Never until our American Republic was established was that notion driven out of the minds of Kings, Princes and great ministers of state. It is one of our country's best services to human kind that it has taught this lesson until now in every part of the civilized world it is perfectly understood that the government is the servant of the people, not the people the servant of the government."
"Yes, I remember," said Jack, "that when the colonies were resisting British oppression, Thomas Jefferson put into an address to George III a pointed and not very polite reminder that the King was after all only a chosen chief magistrate of the people, appointed by them to do their service and promote their happiness. There wasn't much idea of 'the divine right of kings' in Jefferson's noddle."
"No," responded the Doctor, "nor in Franklin's, or Patrick Henry's or John Adams's or James Otis's. Jefferson simply formulated the thought of all of them when he contended that the British parliament had no more right to pass laws for the government and taxation of Virginia than the Virginia legislature had to pass laws for the government and taxation of Great Britain. But the beauty of the whole thing lies in the fact that these great truths, asserted by the Americans in justification of their rebellion, have been fastened upon the minds of men everywhere, and all civilized governments have been compelled to accept and submit to them. There are kings and emperors still, but they have completely changed their conception of their functions. They have been taught, mainly by American statesmen, that they are nothing more than the servants of the people, and that so far from owning the people, the people are their masters. But come boys, it's time to get to bed. So turn in at once. I'm on guard for the next hour and a half."
CHAPTER VII
A "Painter"
There was still much to do on the house and the boys set themselves at work on it very early the next morning. First of all there was a chimney to be built. Jack directed two of the boys to saw out a space nine feet wide for the fireplace, first securing the logs in position by nailing pieces of timber to them, just as he had done with the Doctor's windows. He decided that the fireplace when finished should be five feet wide.
"You see," he said, "we've a hard house to keep warm and we must have a lot of fire. Now the width of a fire means as much as its other dimensions, and so I'm going to have a wide fire. We'll burn full length cordwood in our fireplace, and we'll make room for plenty of it in front of a big back log. In earlier times an open wood fire place was the only heating apparatus people had, and they managed very well with it. Nowadays people insist that an open fire will not heat a room. I'm disposed to think that that's because they make their fireplaces too small. We'll make ours big, like those of our grandfathers."
Then Jack turned to the Doctor and asked:
"Is it freezing?"
"No," answered the Doctor. "The thermometer stands at forty-six, and before noon this little skim of snow will be gone I think. But why do you ask?"
"Because we want to chink and daub our house as soon as possible, and of course we can't do it in freezing weather."
"Why not?" asked the Doctor. "We can warm our hands from time to time and make out to stand it."
"Yes,"