The Plumber, Charles Dudley Warner

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Plumber by Charles Dudley Warner from Humorous Masterpieces for
American Literature. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Dale Growthman. The

(00:22):
Plumber by Charles Dudley Warner, Speaking of the philosophical temper,
there is no class of men whose society is to
be more desired for its quality than that of plumbers.
They are the most agreeable men I know, and the
boys in the business begin to be agreeable very early.

(00:44):
I suspect the secret of it is that they are
agreeable by the hour. In the driest days, my fountain
became disabled, the pipe was stopped up. A couple of plumbers,
with the implements of their craft, came out to view
the situation. There was a good deal of difference of
opinion about where the stoppage was. I found the plumbers

(01:08):
perfectly willing to sit down and talk about it. Talk
by the hour. Some of their guesses and remarks were
exceedingly ingenious, and their general observations on other subjects were
excellent in their way, and could hardly have been better
if they had been made by the job. The work

(01:30):
dragged a little, as it is apt to do by
the hour. The plumbers had occasion to make me several visits.
Sometimes they would find upon arrival that they had forgotten
some indispensable tool, and one would go back to the
shop a mile and a half after it, and his
comrade would await his return with the most exemplary patients,

(01:54):
and would sit down and talk. Always by the hour.
I do not know, but it is a habit to
have something wanted at the shop. They seem to me
very good workmen, and always willing to stop and talk
about the job or anything else whenever I went near them.
Nor have they any of that impetuous hurry that is

(02:16):
said to be the bane of our American civilization. To
their credit, be it said that I never observed anything
of it in them. They can afford to wait. Two
of them will sometimes wait nearly half a day while
a comrade goes for a tool. They are patient and philosophical.

(02:37):
It is a great pleasure to meet such men. One
only wishes that there were some work he could do
for them. By the hour. There ought to be reciprocity.
I think they have very nearly solved the problem of life.
It is to work for other people, never for yourself,
and get your pay by the hour. Then have no

(03:00):
anxiety and little work. If you do things by the job,
you are perpetually driven. The hours are scourges. If you
work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream
of time, which is always bearing you on to the
haven of pay, whether you make any effort or not.

(03:22):
Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A
plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty
refractory nut in a cramped position where the tongs continually
slipped off, would swear. But I never heard one of
them swear or exhibit the least impatience at such vexation

(03:44):
working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who
is paid by the hour, how sweet the flight of
time seems to his calm mind. The End of the
Plumber by Charles Lee Warner