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In describing the process of making whiskey in the mountain stills, I shall confine myself to the operations of the little moonshiner, because they illustrate the surprising shiftiness of our backwoodsmen. Every man in the big woods is a jack-of-all-trades. His skill in extemporizing utensils, and even crude machines, out of the trees that grow around him, is of no mean order.
Mac Lindsay, the stock-whip expert and jack-of-all-trades, confessed to only one ambition in life to dress in a little red jacket and fez and lead him round on a chain! The report that he made a Ford car out of bully-beef tins has, I understand, been officially denied. Just a week before the Armistice we lost Colthart, the best quartermaster in the Army, and one of the best of fellows.
The farmer who made himself a carpenter to-day and a shoemaker to-morrow was, in their estimation, a "Jack-of-all-trades," certainly not a farmer in the dignified sense which they had been accustomed to attach to the name.
"Olly was always ready to lend her a helpin' hand in the house at anything that had to be done, which has made him a Jack-of-all-trades cookin' among the rest, as you see." "A pity that the means of displaying his powers are so limited," said Paul, who busied himself in levelling the ground beside the fire for their beds.
"But where's the doctor to give out the medicines," asked Fox, who began to moderate his gaze as he recovered self-possession. "Well, mate," answered Fred, with a bashful air, "I am doctor as well as skipper. Indeed, I'm parson too a sort of Jack-of-all-trades!
"I've been a vagabond and a blackguard in my time," returned the other, fiercely; "I've been a street tumbler, a tramp, a gypsy's boy! I've sung for half-pence with dancing dogs on the high-road! I've worn a foot-boy's livery, and waited at table! I've been a common sailors' cook, and a starving fisherman's Jack-of-all-trades! What has a gentleman in your position in common with a man in mine?
In 1795, when the squall of the Terror had passed over, Nicolas Sechard was obliged to look out for another jack-of-all-trades to be compositor, reader, and foreman in one; and an Abbe who declined the oath succeeded the Comte de Maucombe as soon as the First Consul restored public worship.
Accordingly, one day having obtained shore leave, I purchased a new rig-out, and leaving my sea-going togs with the Jewish shopman, I made tracks, as the saying goes, into the Bush with all speed. Happen what might, I was resolved that Captain Fairweather should not set eyes on George Fairfax again. From that time onward my career was a strange one. I became a veritable Jack-of-all-Trades.
"Smartness," rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word "cleverness," used with that lurking contempt for cleverness which is truly English and which long survived in the dialect of New England, where the village ne'er-do-well or Jack-of-all-trades used to be pronounced a "clever" fellow.
He could take a watch apart and put it together again; he could mend a harness if necessary; he could make a wagon; nay, he could even doctor a horse when it got spavin or glanders. He was a sort of jack-of-all-trades, and a very useful man in a valley where mechanics were few and transportation difficult. He loved work for its own sake, and was ill at ease when he had not a tool in his hand.
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