Immediately the town gave him to understand that he had full power to
draw upon the public treasury, to the extent of one elephant; and the
youth, who always flocked adoringly about him, intimated that they were
with him, heart and soul. Thereupon, in Eli Pike's barn, selected as of
goodly size, creation reveled, the while a couple of men, chosen for
their true eye and practiced hand, went into the woods, and chopped
down two beautiful slender trees for tusks. For many a day now, the
atmosphere of sacred art had hung about that barn. Brad was a maker,
and everybody felt it. Fired by no tradition of the horse that went to
the undoing of Troy, and with no plan before him, he set his framework
together, nailing with unerring hand. Did he need a design, he who had
brooded over his bliss these many months when Tiverton thought he was
"jest lazin' round?" Nay, it was to be "all wrought out of the carver's
brain," and the brain was ready.
Often have I wished some worthy chronicler had been at hand when
Tiverton sat by at the making of the elephant; and then again I have
realized that, though the atmosphere was highly charged, it may have
been void of homely talk. For this was a serious moment, and even when
Brad gave sandpaper and glass into the hands of Lothrop Wilson, the
cooper; bidding him smooth and polish the tusks, there was no jealousy:
only a solemn sense that Mr.
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