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LAWRENCE'S ADVENTURES
AMONG THE
ICE-CUTTERS, GLASS-MAKERS, COAL-MINERS,
IRON-MEN, AND SHIP-BUILDERS.
BY
J. T. TROWBRIDGE.
BOSTON:
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1871.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,
BY J. T. TROWBRIDGE,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.




PREFACE.
THESE "Adventures" of Lawrence were written
in the faith that instruction could be made
entertaining, and that the young might be educated
to observe and think while following the by-paths
of a story.  Contributed originally to "Our Young
Folks," their success as magazine papers has led to
their republication in this form.
J.T. T. T.
ARLINGTON, MASS., Dec. 1, 1870.








CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
AT THE POND-SIDE.
PAGI
I. LEARNING TO SWIM.. 1
II. How THE DROWNED BOY WAS SAVED...    4
CHAPTER  II.
AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
I. CUTTING THE ICE.....           14
II. HOUSING THE ICE...   23
CHAPTER III.
AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
I. THE "GAFFER"....... 27
II. A VISIT TO THE CAVE..               32
III. THE MIELTING-POTS.            40
IV. WHAT GLASS IS MADE OF...              47
V. THE GLASS-BLOWERS... 52
VI. MOULDING AND PRESSING.                     70
VII. PLATING AND ANNEALING.... 73
VIII. CUTTING AND ORNAMENTING....   78
IX. COLORING AND SILVERING          ~.... 85
X. WINDOW-GLASS AND PLATE-GLASS...   88
XI. OTHER CURIOUS MATTERS..... 93




vi                    CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
I. A JOURNEY TO THE COAL REGION..  97
II. MR. CLARENCE AND HIS DOG MUFF...   104
III. SCRANTON AND COAL...... 109
IV. THE BREAKER....                     11. 17
V. THE SHAFT.                                   130
VI. IN THE GANGWAY......    138
VII. THE MINERS AT WORK..... 148
VIII. CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES...   e    154
CHAPTER V.
AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
I. LETTER-WRITING UNDER DIFFICULTIES... 174
II. THE BLAST-FURNACES BY NIGHT...   180
III. THE CASTING-HOUSE....      188
CHAPTER VI.
AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
I. THE SHIP-YARD....... 199
II. BUILDING THE SHIP.                      204
III.' FINISHING  -.....    213
IV. THE MOULDING-LOFT....                220
V. SPARS AND RIGGING. 230
VI. THE LAUNCH......              236
INDEX........               241




LAWRENCE'S ADVENTURES.
CHAPTER I.
AT THE POND-SIDE.
I.
LEARNING TO SWIM.
T was June when Lawrence came to the pondside to live. His uncle's house stood on a high
green bank; and his aunt gave him an attic room
with a window that looked out upon the water. The
winding shores were fringed with flags and willows,
or overhung by shady groves; and all around were
orchards and gardens and meadows.
A happy boy was Lawrence, for he was passionately fond of the water, and he had never lived so near
a pond before. The scene from his window was
never twice the same. Sometimes the pond was like
glass, mirroring the sky and the still trees. Sometimes light breezes swept over it, and sail-boats rode
the dancing waves. Then there were the evenings,
when clouds of the loveliest colors floated above it,
and the moon rose and silvered it; and the mornings,
when all the splendors of the new-risen sun were
reflected into Lawrence's chamber.
1                        A




2              AT THE POND-SIDE.
Whenever he had a leisure hour, - for he went to
school, and worked in the garden, —he was to be
seen rambling by the shore, or rowing away in his
uncle's boat; and he found that the faithful performance of his tasks made his sports all the sweeter
to him.
As children who play about the water are always
in more or less danger of falling into it, Lawrence's
uncle had lost no time in teaching him to swim.
"The first thing for you to learn," said the doctor,
-for his uncle was a physician, — "is confidence.
Plunge your head under water."
Lawrence did so, and came up with dripping hair
and face, gasping. The doctor made him repeat the
exercise until he neither gasped nor choked.
" That does not hurt you, does it? No. Neither
will it hurt you if you sink to the bottom, for you
can hold your breath; the water is shallow, and,
besides, I am here to help you. Now try to take a
single stroke, just as the frogs do. Throw yourself
boldly off your feet, and don't be afraid of sinking."
Lawrence, after considerable hesitation, tried the
experiment, and found that he could swim a single
stroke, and come down upon his feet again without
drowning. He tried it again and again, delighted at
his success.
"That will do for this lesson," said his uncle.
"You have been long enough in the water. Swimming is a fine exercise for boys, and the bath is
good for them; but they often make the mistake of




LEARNING TO SWIM.              3
staying too long in the water. Especially at first you
must be careful: after you get used to it, you can
stay in longer. Never go in when you are heated;
or if you do, come out again immediately, and continue
exercising, so as to keep the pores of your skin open."
Lawrence learned, in his next lesson, to swim two
strokes, and in a few days he could swim a rod. His
uncle then taught him how to dive.
"You must avoid falling flat on the water; for if
you do so, from any great height, it will beat the
breath out of your body almost as suddenly as if you
struck a board. Learn to keep your eyes open under
the water. Some people's nostrils are so large that
the water gets into their heads when they dive; if
that is the case with yours, it will be well to stuff a
little cotton into them."
Lawrence found no trouble of that kind. He was
soon able to dive, and pick up pebbles, and to swim
beneath the surface. His uncle then taught him how
to rescue a drowning person.
"If he is still struggling, you must not let him
get hold of you, or he will very likely cause you to
drown with him. The safest and readiest method is
to pull him up by his hair. Be sure and keep behind
him as you bring him to the surface. Do not try to
do more than to lift his face out of water, as you
swim with him to the shore. The human body is so
light that it may be supported in the water by a very
slight effort; but it is hard to keep any portion of it
much above the surface."




4              AT THE POND-SIDE.
" But what shall I do after I get him to the shore?"
asked Lawrence.
"That is something very important to learn, which
you will very likely find useful some day, if jou live
near this pond.  Three young people have been
drowned in it within five years, two of whom at least
might have been saved from death, had the persons
with them known how to get them out of the water,
or what to do with them after they had got them
out."
"I wish you would teach me that," said the boy.
"Very well; I'11 give tyou a practical lesson before
long."
IT.
HOW THE DROWNED BOY WAS SAVED.
ACCORDINGLY, a few days afterwards, the doctor met
Lawrence and his companions as they were coming
up from the water, and, seizing his nephew, exclaimed,
"You have been drowned, have you?"
"Not to my knowledge," said Lawrence, laughing.
"Yes; you fell from the boat just now, getting
water-lilies. You know how to swim, but you got
tangled among the weeds, and were three minutes
under water. You have.just been fished out, and
brought to shore. Lie down, sir, for a drowned boy
has no business on his feet."
Lawrence, who understood very well what his




HOW THE DROWNED BOY WAS SAVED.         5
uncle -meant, dropped down on the grass, and tried to
play the part of a drowned person seriously; but he
could n't help laughing, and all the while he watched
closely to see what was done for him.
"What shall we do, boys?" cried the doctor.
"For not a minute is to be lost."
"Carry him home, the first thing," said Tim
Hooper.
" No, we have n't time for that,- so many precious
minutes would be wasted."
"Put him in a warm bath," said Jake Thomes.
" We could n't do that without carrying him home,
or bringing the warm water to him. Besides, the
warm bath is hurtful under such circumstances. A
person will drown quicker in warm than in cold
water. The reason seems to be, that cold water
strikes a chill into the blood, so that its circulation is
impeded, and less air is required for it in the lungs.
The blood goes to the lungs to throw off carbon, and
to get oxygen, which is breathed in with the air, of
which you know it is a part. When a person drowns,
the supply of oxygen is cut off, and the carbonic acid,
retained in the blood, poisons it. A person in a
swoon may live half an hour under water; for his
blood moves so slowly that very little oxygen is
required for it, and there is but little carbon to be
thrown off. Now if we stimulate the circulation
before we manage to get fresh air into the lungs, —
as we should if we put him into a warm bath, - you
see we should increase the difficulty."




6              AT THE POND-SIDE.
" The first thing I should do would be to go for the
doctor," said Lawrence.
" No, you would n't, for you are drowned, and have
no voice in the matter. Besides, I am five miles
away, attending to a boy who broke his leg falling
from a beam in a barn. But fortunately a boy comes
up who has been told what to do in such cases, —
fortunately indeed, for already too much time has
been lost while we were considering what to do, instead of doing it. This boy knows that the first
thing necessary is fresh air in the lungs. To make
sure that the passage to the lungs is open, he turns
the patient on his face, in which position any water
that may have lodged in his mouth and throat, or
anything that may have risen from his stomach and
choked him, drops out."
The doctor at the same time turned Lawrence on
his face, to illustrate his method.
"In this position, the tongue also falls forward,
and opens a passage to the windpipe. But often the
tongue is so much swollen that it is necessary to
put your finger on the roots of it and press it forward. This should be looked to, and where there is
a hand to spare it will be well to keep the tongue in
place in that way. Act promptly, and don't be afraid
of hurting him. In this case, however, the tongue
will take care of itself. All this must be quickly
done; and the new-comer hastens to make the patient
gasp. He places him on his side,- thus. He rubs
his forehead smartly, to bring warmth and sensitive



HOW THE DROWNED BOY WAS SAVED.         7
ness to the skin, then dashes cold water upon it. If
he has any snuff about him, or hartshorn, or spirits
of any kind, he applies them freely to the nostrils.
But the drowned boy does not gasp. Then what?"
" Blow in my lungs," said Lawrence.
"But my own breath is exhausted of oxygen, and
charged with carbonic acid; and what we want is
fresh air.  While one of these boys runs for the
doctor, and another for dry blankets, this is what the
boy who knows does. He loosens your clothes; then
turns you down again upon your face, -completely
upon your breast, - with one wrist under your forehead, thus, and passes his other hand with a gentle
pressure down your back.  That compresses the
lungs, and drives the bad air out of them. Then,
making the other boys help, he turns you again on
your side, and partly upon your back, in which position the lungs open again of themselves, and draw in
fresh air. Repeat this process six or eight times a
minute, - not too often, for the low circulation
requires but little air, and too much cools the body.
What we want now is to keep the body warm, and
to excite circulation. As soon as we have got the
artificial breathing started, we strip off all the wet
clothes; wrap the body in the blankets which have
been brought; let the fresh air blow on the face and
chest; rub and slap the body till it is dry and sensitive, and dash cold water upon it; then rub and
slap again. If the blankets do not come, throw off
your own coats to wrap the body in."




8             AT THE POND-SIDE.
"How long will it take to bring me to?" Lawrence
anxiously inquired.
"That depends upon how thoroughly drowned you
were. I should not give you up for an hour; but I
should not have much hope of you, if I could perceive no movement of the heart, by putting my ear
to it, after a quarter of an hour. In five or ten
minutes I should expect you to make a little gasp;
and after that I should consider you safe.
"Now, boys," the doctor continued, "remember
that, as long as nothing is done to put fresh air into
the lungs of a drowned person, it is just the same for
him as if he remained all that while in the water.
So you must be prepared to do all these things with
the utmost promptitude."
He then made them take little Tim Hooper and go
through with all the movements with him, as he had
done with Lawrence, and repeat the process until they
were perfect in it.
" If this was taught in every school where children
live or play near a pond or river," he said, "more
than half the cases of actual death from drowning
might be prevented."
The boys laughed, and thought the lesson more a
good joke than anything else. They little expected
ever to have to practise it. But now see how useful
a little knowledge sometimes proves.
December came, and the pond froze over. So thin,
however, was the coating of ice that but few boys
ventured to go upon it.




HOW THE DROWNED BOY WAS SAVED.         9
"Wait, my boy, a day or two, until the ice is
stronger," said the doctor. " Nothing will be lost by
waiting; but much will be risked by attempting to
skate to-day."
So Lawrence, not without some mutterings of discontent, I am sorry to say, restrained his eagerness
to strap on the new skates his uncle had given him,
and remained on the shore, watching those who did
skate.
Suddenly a boy fell, broke the ice, and went in.
Struggling to get out, he slipped under the ice. It
was Jake Thomes, one of the boys who had learned
the lesson with Lawrence. How little did he imagine, when he laughed at it, that the time would so
soon come for it to be practised on him!
"Boy drowned! Boy drowned!" was the cry; and
the skaters flew to the rescue.
Lawrence knew that, under such circumstances,
his uncle would approve of his going upon the ice,
and he started to run to Jake's assistance. But he
had scarcely left the shore when he saw the ice give
way again, under the weight of two skaters who approached the broken place. There were now three
boys in the water.
"This won't do," thought he; and he ran back to
the shore. There was a man at work, preparing some
hot-beds, in a garden near by. He had already heard
the alarm. " Bring planks! a rake! " cried Lawrence.
He seized one of the broad board coverings of the
beds, called shutters, and shoved it out before him
1*




10             AT THE POND-SIDE.
on the ice. The man followed with another and a
long-handled garden-rake. Nothing had yet been
done for Jake, who had not been seen since he went
down.  Other skaters had arrived; but they were
engaged in trying to rescue the two boys who had
fallen in after him. It was perilous business. The
ice was bending and cracking under them, and they
could not reach the edge of it without breaking in,
like the others. Fortunately, both boys could swim,
and they were sustaining themselves by holding on
to coats thrown to them' over the edge of the ice.
Thus far, at every attempt to get out, they had only
broken the ice still more.
Lawrence pushed his shutter close up to the broken
place, and, lying flat on his breast upon it, looked
down into the clear cold water. He could have seen
the bottom but for the floating fragments of thin ice,
and the ripples formed by the two boys trying to get
out.
" Keep still! keep still!" he cried; but that was
not easy for two boys in their position to do. As
long as the light reflected from the waves danoed in
his sight, he could see nothing. So he plunged his
face into the water, with his eyes open. Beneath the
surface, they could see very well. And there, lying
on the bottom, in about ten feet of water, clinging fast
to some weeds, with his red tippet on his neck and
his skates on his feet, was Jake Thomes.
He was directly under the ice Lawrence was on.
The plunged face came dripping out of the cold




HOW THE DROWNED BOY WAS SAVED.'   11
water. "The rake!"  The man handed it to Lawrence, who thrust it down, hooked one of the teeth
into Jake's tippet, and drew him steadily up.
The broad shutter distributed the pressure of his
weight over so large a surface of the ice that it did
not break, even when he pulled the drenched and
lifeless body out.
The situation on the ice being unsafe and awkward,
the body was quickly slid ashore on the shutter, and,taken to the gardener's house, which was close by the
pond. With the other shutter that had been brought,
the other two skaters were speedily rescued; and
Lawrence had nothing to do but to think of Jake
and his uncle's lesson.
"I should n't have stopped to bring him to the
house," he said afterwards, " but Peter insisted on it."
Arrived at the house, however, Peter, who was
ignorant as an owl of what should be done in the
case, left all to the boy.
"O yes! roll him! " said he, "I've heard that was
good, - to get the water out of him."
Lawrence did not stop to explain that the rolling
process was not to get the water out, for none could
enter the lungs, but to get the air in. He worked
vigorously, according to his uncle's directions. Meantime his uncle was sent for; but he was not at
home.
Laid out on Peter's kitchen-table, his wet clothes
removed, his limbs loosely wrapped in warm blankets, and several persons smartly slapping and rub



12        AT THE POND-SIDE.
1kl




HOW THE DROWNED BOY WAS SAVED.    13
bing them, according to Lawrence's directions, while
Lawrence himself, with Peter's assistance, rolled him
from his breast to his side, and over again upon his
breast, at the same time keeping a finger at the roots
of the tongue, - this was the situation in which the
drowned boy's mother found him, when, having heard
the terrible news, she came running to Peter's house.
But the peril was now nearly over. Jake had
gasped slightly once or twice. Then came the agony
of recovering consciousness, in the midst of which
the doctor arrived.
It was then half an hour from the time when Jake
broke through the ice, and it was evident to all, that,
if nothing had been done for him all that while, his
recovery would have been impossible.
" Well done! well done! " cried the Doctor. " You
have made good use of my lesson, boy! Woman,
your child is saved."
The hearty praise of his uncle, the joy of the
mother, and his own consciousness of having done
a good action, made this the happiest day of Lawrence's life.




14          AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
CHAPTER II.
AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
I.
CUTTING THE ICE.
A HE boys- and, I am  glad to say,
the girls too — had enjoyed a few
days of the very finest skating, when
one night there came a fall of snow,
and the next morning Lawrence, looking from his window, saw the pond
\   covered with a shining white mantle.
"Never mind," said he; "we can
sweep places to skate on.  A good
skater don't care for a space larger
than a parlor floor to practise on."
So he went out that afternoon
with a shovel and a broom to clear
off a little of the snow.  He was
surprised to find a number of men
on the pond before him. They had
long chisel-shaped iron bars, with
which they were cutting holes in
the ice, about five paces apart, all
over the pond.
"Look here!" cried Lawrence, running up to one




CUTTING THE ICE.              15
of them, "what is this for? You're spoiling our
skating."
"Your skating is spoiled already," said the man;
and click! click! his bar went through the ice again.
" Our business would be spoiled too, if we did n't cut
these holes."
"I don't see how!"
"I'11 tell you how. This coating of snow prevents
the ice from forming. Snow is warm; did you know
it? A sheep covered up in a drift will live through
a night that would freeze her to death if she was exposed to the weather.  Just so, a heavy fall of snow
is the best thing in the world to keep strawberries
and other plants from winter-killing.  It keeps the
pond warm in the same way. Ice will form, to be
sure, under the snow, but so slow we should n't get
half a crop if we did n't cut these holes and let the
water through."
" I see," cried Lawrence. "The weight of the snow
makes the ice sink a little; that forces the water up,
and the water soaks the snow, and then freezes and
makes ice."
"Yes, but that top-ice - snow-ice, we call it - is
good for nothing. It's only a bother to us, as you
will see if you are here when we are cutting. But it
don't prevent the ice from forming underneath, as
the snow does."
"I understand,- the ice is a good conductor of
caloric, and the snow is n't," said Lawrence, who had
learned enough of natural philosophy to come to this




16          AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
conclusion.  "But why don't you have some sort of
horse-scrapers to scrape the snow off?"
"We have horse-scrapers, but now the ice is n't
strong enough to bear a horse; that's the trouble."
"Will it be good skating after the snow soaks and
freezes? "
"It will be pretty rough. There's a good strip
along by the Doctor's shore where we don't cut; it is
kept for skating and fishing.  You can sweep the
snow from that, if you like, and out holes for pickerel
too,- a thing that is n't allowed on any other part
of the pond."
"How  can you prevent it?  Do you own the
pond?"
"No, but the ice-company have bought the privilege of cutting from all the owners around the pond,
and so control it. Pickerel holes would spoil the-ice
at the time of cutting; besides, the horses would get
their legs in them."
Lawrence was very anxious to see the work begin.
He skated meanwhile on his uncle's shore, and after
the snow-ice had frozen he went all over the pond, -
although, as the man had predicted, he found it pretty
rough.
Then there came another fall of snow. By this time
the ice was firm enough to bear up horses, and the
workmen came on it with plank scrapers six feet
broad, and scraped the snow all up, like hay, in big
windrows stretching across the pond.
Then there came still another snow, accompanied




CUTTING THE ICE.             17
by sleet, and followed by rain; so that, when the
storm was over, the pond was covered with a coarse
frozen crust, too hard for the wooden scrapers. This
brought out the iron-edged scoop-sctapers, formed for
removing either heavy or crusted snow. Each scraper
was drawn by a single horse, with a harness which
consisted of a simple girth and loops for the shafts.
At last, one bright morning, early in January, Lawrence looked from his window and saw that the iceharvest had fairly begun. It was Wednesday; -there
was no school in the afternoon, and as soon as he
had eaten his dinner he hastened out to see the icecutters.
There were two men fishing on his uncle's shore.
Having chopped holes in the ice, they dropped their
hooks through them, baited with live minnows which
had been caught in the autumn and preserved in
tanks for this purpose. Their minnows were in a
pail; an axe and three or four pickerel lay on the
ice; and each man was watching half a dozen lines
sunk in different places, a few yards apart, and adjusted so that a bite at either would pull down a rag
of red flannel set up on a stick for a signal.
Lawrence, like most boys, took a lively interest in
fishing. But something of still greater interest attracted him to-day; and, stopping but a few minutes
to watch the sport, he hastened on to the scene of the
ice-cutting.
Two or three hundred men were at work on the
pond, in two divisions, one at the upper and the other
B




18          AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
at the lower end; presenting, with their horses and
ice-saws and ice-hooks and cutters and scrapers and
planes, a wonderfully animated and busy picture.
He chose to visit the lower end first, because he
there expected to find the man whose acquaintance
he had already made. He saw some men at work
with a long, straight strip of board and a curiouslooking instrument, and ran up to them. One got
down on his face and took sight across the board at
a target, while the others drew the instrument along
the edge of it. They thus marked the ice, somewhat
as a school-boy draws a straight line with a pencil
and ruler.
The man who had taken sight got up, and Lawrence saw that it was his old acquaintance.
"So you've come to see the ice-cutting. Well,
here you have what is properly the beginning of it.
We are striking a straight line, which is almost
finished."
Three or four more lengths of the board brought
them to the target, set up by one of the windrows of
snow.
" This board is what we call a straight-edge. Here
is an arm to it which we now open; and you see it
lies on the ice like a carpenter's square. Now we
are to strike another line at right angles with this;
and so we lay out our square-cornered fields of any
number of acres, which are to be all cut up into such
cakes as the ice-man brings you in summer. This
instrument we mark with is called a hand-groove.




CUTTING THE ICE.             19
You see it has seven steel teeth, set one behind another, and riveted in this strong iron back. Each
tooth is a quarter of an inch broad, and forms a
sharp little plough by itself.  The first cuts the
slightest groove in the ice; the second is a trifle
longer, and cuts a trifle deeper; the third, deeper
still; and so on, till the last, which leaves the groove
an inch and a half deep."
" You go all around your field in this way?" said
Lawrence.
" No, only on two sides. Now see, - here comes
an odd-looking horse-machine down the line we have
struck.  That is what we call a guide-and-marker.
The guide is a smooth-edged blade that runs in the
groove we have cut. The marker is a cutter made on
the same principle with this hand-groove. The two
are so fitted and fastened together that, when the
guide runs in the groove, the marker cuts another
parallel groove twenty-two inches from it."
As the machine approached, Lawrence saw that it
was drawn by a single strong rope, fifteen or twenty
feet long, which kept it at a distance from the horse.
The horse was led by one man, and the machine held
by its handles, like a plough, by another. The marker
made a crisp, brittle sound, and threw out fine, bright
chips, as the teeth cut through the ice; and after it
had passed, Lawrence saw that there were two perfectly straight, beautiful grooves instead of one.
Arrived at the corner of the new field, the horse
was turned about, and the machine (by means of an




20          AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
~~~~~~~~~~~
line
t



CUTTING THE ICE.             21
ingenious arrangement) turned over, so that, returning, the guide ran in the freshly cut groove, and
another groove was cut by the marker, twentytwo inches farther on.
"In this way," said Lawrence's friend, "the machine goes over the whole field, the last groove it cuts
forming the boundary of the other side.  Then it
commences on this line, which we are here running
at right angles with the first, and goes over the whole
field the other way, cutting it all up into checkers
twenty-two inches square. The marker cuts a groove
two inches deep. Now you see another machine following it, drawn by a horse, just the same. But instead of being double, like the guide-and-marker, it
is a single instrument, made up of teeth like the
marker; only the teeth are longer, and they cut
deeper. That we call a four-inch cutter, as it leaves
the groove four inches deep. That will be followed
by a six-inch cutter, and that by an eight-inch, and
that again by a ten-inch.  Each cuts two inches,
which is about as much as a horse ought to be compelled to do. We have also a twelve-inch cutter, but
this ice is not thick enough to require it."
" Do you cut clear through the ice? I should n't
think that would do."
" No, indeed. This ice is about fifteen inches thick,
and we shall cut it only ten inches. We have harvested ice when it was only ten inches thick, and again
when it was twenty-three inches; but that is rare.
Sixteen inchesis a good average thickness for working."




22           AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
Lawrence remained with his friend until the second
line was struck. By this time a new machine, likewise drawn by a horse, made its appearance. It was
the ice-plane, twenty-two inches broad, running between two grooves, and planing off the porous snowice which has already been described.
"Now," said the man, "we will see how the ice is
housed." And he took Lawrence over a field where
a hundred men had been at work all the morning.
It was a busy scene. On one side, the six-, eight-,
and ten-inch cutters were going. On the other, men
were breaking off broad rafts of the grooved ice, and
floating them along a canal which had been cut to
the ice-houses. Some were cutting through to the
water with saws. Others were splitting off the sheets,
the ends of which had been thus cut, with iron bars
called "barring-off bars." Still others, by means of
"calking-bars," were calking with ice-chips the ends
of the grooves which were to come in contact with
the water.
"The calking  said Lawrence's friend, "is to keep
the water from running into the grooves. For if it
gets into them, it will circulate all through them,
and then freeze, and the ice will be a solid mass
again, as if it had n't been grooved at all.
"These rafts, or sheets of cakes, are, you see,
thirty cakes long and twelve broad. The ends have
to be sawed; but every twelfth groove — in this
direction, lengthwise - is cut deeper than the rest, so
that one man can easily bar off a sheet. Ice splits




HOUSING THE ICE.             23
very easy from top to bottom, but it is hard to split
it in any other direction. Lay a cake up out of
water in a warm day, and it will always begin to
honeycomb from the top downward. Turning it on
its side makes no difference with it; the frost insists
on taking down its work first where it began to build
it up. This shows that ice has a grain."
II.
HOUSING THE ICE.
THE sheet of three hundred and sixty cakes, being
split off, with its grooves all carefully calked around
the ends and sides exposed to the water, was then
floated off into the canal, and dragged on towards the
ice-houses. One man, armed with an ice-hook, -an
instrument resembling a pike-pole, - sometimes riding on the sheet, and sometimes walking by the edge
of the canal, navigated this checkered raft to the
slip, where it was broken up with bars into blocks of
six cakes each, by men standing on the platform.
Each of these blocks was fastened upon by an iron
grapple, and taken by two men and a horse up an inclined plane to the summit of a strong staging built
before the windows of a row of white ice-houses.
One man guided the horse; the other guided the
block along the smooth rails with a wooden handle
attached to the grapple. It was lively work, one
horse going up after another at a swift pace. At the




24          AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
summit of the staging, the blocks were seized by
men with ice-hooks, and shoved along the now slightly declining rails towards the windows where they
were wanted. Swiftly sliding, one after another, went
the bright crystal masses, to be seized again by men
standing at the windows, and whirled into the icehouses, where, layer upon layer, they were stowed away.
"As soon as the ice in these is built up to the level
of this staging, the horses will begin to carry it up
the next one" (for there was another staging above
the first); "from that we shall fill the houses nearly
to the top; then the ice will be completely covered
with hay. Each of these vaults," continued Lawrence's friend, as they went up and looked into one
of the great, gloomy buildings, into which the blocks
went sliding and bouncing, and where several dimly
seen men were at work taking care of them, looking
like demons in a pit, -" each of these vaults holds
five thousand tons of ice. You will see, behind the
ice-houses, trains of cars loading at the same time.
The cars take the ice to ships in the harbor, and
they take it to all parts of the world. We want to
cut, this year, sixty-five or seventy thousand tons.
Our two hundred and fifty men will cut about five
thousand tons a day."
Lawrence noticed that the ice-houses had very
thick wooden walls; but his friend said: " Each wall
is in reality two walls, two feet apart, with the space
between filled in with tan-bark, which is the best
thing we have for keeping out the heat."




HOUSING THE ICE.             25
"Do you ever cut two crops of ice the same
season?"
"Seldom. The second freezing makes poor ice
compared with the first. I don't pretend to give the
reason. There is a great difference in the quality of
ice for Weeping.  Ice cut in melting weather is
porous, and won't keep half as long as ice cut in cold
weather."
"It seems to me," said Lawrence, as they descended the inclined plane, " machinery might be invented
to take the place of these horses in elevating the
ice."
"Well, how would you arrange it?"
"I don't know; but I've been thinking you might
have two wheels, one at the water down there, and
the other at the top of the ice-house; have an endless chain pass over them, hung full of grapples;
set it in motion by an ordinary steam-engine; and let
the grapples catch the blocks of ice in the slip, and
carry them up an inclined plane to the stagings."
The man laughed. "Go to the other end of the
pond, and you'll find very much such a machine as
you have suggested. A common steam-engine of
forty-horse power does the work of a hundred and
fifty men and seventy-five horses, and does it quicker
and better. We shall elevate all our ice in that way
another year."
Lawrence hastened to the upper ice-houses, and
saw, to his delight, the operation of the new machine.
It was so much like the one he had arranged in his
2




26           AMONG THE ICE-CUTTERS.
own mind, that he began to consider himself a great
inventor. The floating blocks, of two cakes each,
were fed into a little slip under the lower wheel,
which revolved just over the water. They were there
seized by the grapples, which, coming down empty
on the upper side of the moving chain,, returned
loaded on the under side.
Stiff ratan brooms, fastened to the platform, swept
the blocks clean, as the grapples carried them up.
The crystallized pond-water was thus elevated by this
chain-pump, and poured into the ice-house windows,
the rattling and sliding masses, as they flew along
the stagings, resembling an endless train of silverbright cars seen on high bridges in the distance.
There were four stagings, one above another, running
the whole length of a long row of ice-houses. The
ice was elevated at one end, so that one machine
answered for all. The blocks were launched by the
grapples upon a short inclined plane, which set them
sliding down the gently sloping staging to the windows, where they were seized. The houses being
filled to the level of one staging, the ice was then, by
a slight alteration in the machinery, carried up to the
next.
There was something about this harvesting of the
ice so brisk and beautiful that Lawrence remained
all the afternoon watching it; and more than once,
afterwards, he went to spend a delightful hour among
the ice-cutters.




THE " GAFFER."            27
CHAPTER  III.
AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
THE " GAFFER."'
"' 5TELL, Lawrence," said the Doctor, one day,
~VV shoving his chair back from the dinnertable, "how do you think of spending this afternoon?"
"I think I shall finish this piece of pie the first
thing," said Lawrence. "Then, as I've no lessons to
learn, I feel as if I should like to have a good time."
"If you could manage to have what you call a
good time, and learn something too, how would that
suit you?" Lawrence thought that would suit him
better than anything else. "Well," said the Doctor,
"I have business down near the Glass Works; you
can go with me, if you like, and perhaps we can
learn something about making glass."
"Hurrah!" said Lawrence, delighted; and his pie
went the way of all pie in the hands of boys of fifteen with more than usual rapidity.
They had just time to walk to the railroad station
and step on board the down train as it stopped. It
thundered on again, and in half an hour brought
them in sight of a building which the boy knew as




28         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
the Glass Works, an'd which he had long wished to
peep into. His heart beat quick with curiosity; and
he began to wonder (for he had never given the subject much thought before) how such an infinite
variety of useful and curious articles — windowpanes, mirrors, vases, beads, goblets, lamps, lenses
of telescopes and microscopes - were fashioned from
so brittle a material, and how the material itself was
made.
It was a wide.spreading, irregular pile, with brick
walls, and two immense, tapering, tall, round chimneys soaring up into the blue sky above its roofs.
The train let them off at a platform near by, and
then moved on past the rear of the factory.
"Glass works always like to be near a railroad or a
wharf, I find," said the Doctor.
Lawrence said he' supposed they sent off heavy
freights.
"Yes, but those are, a trifle compared with the
freights that come to them. Look! tihere is a coal
train switching off and backing up to the yard. They
buy fuel by the cargo, as we do by the ton, and stuff
it up those huge chimneys. But what is so heavy
when it goes in is light enough when it goes out."
They looked up -at the cloud which poured out of
one of the great flues, and stretched away horizontally, in a long, black streamer,'high over the adjacent
city. " Some of it flies off in smoke, which we can
see, but more of it in gases, which w46 chnnot see;
and the wind might blow away the ashes. Yet," said




THE "GAFFER."              29
the Doctor, as they walked on, " hot an atom of the
coal is really destroyed; it can't be destroyed; it only
changes form."
Going around to the front of the factory, they
entered a small door beside a large gate, passed
through the office, where the Doctor seemed to be
acquainted,;and thence through rooms full of wonderful things, which Lawrence wished to stop at once
and examine. But his uncle said, "No; we shall
come around to these in due time. In visiting -a place
like this, if you really wish to learn much about it,
the way is to begin at the beginning. Now let me
see."
They entered the spacious rear yard of the factory
from one side, just as the coal train backed into it
from the other.
"Ah! there is the gaffer! " said the Doctor. "Do
you know what a gaffer is?"
"Laugher, one who laughs; quaffer, one who
quaffs; gaffer, one who — gaffs, I guess," said Lawrence, smiling; "though what gaffing is, I don't know
more than the man in the moon."
" He sees us; we'11 ask him," said the Doctor.
A short, solid-looking man, in an easy slouched
hat and a loose business-coat, who was giving a gang
of men directions about unloading the coal, left
them, on seeing the Doctor, and came and shook
hands with him very cordially. Somehow the Doctor seemed to know everybody.
"This is my nephew," —and Lawrence had the




30          AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
honor of shaking hands with a gaffer. "By the
way," added the Doctor, "I have often wondered why
it is you are called a gaffer. What is the meaning
of the word?"
"I don't know; it's a name we're called by," said
the man. "The foreman of any other factory than
glass works is called a foreman or boss, - or superintendent, if you wish to be very smart. But the
foreman of a glass-house is always the gafer, —
though I doubt if any one can tell you why."
" Ah! I have it! I have it! " cried the Doctor, tapping Lawrence on the shoulder with his cane in such
a way that the boy suspected he had " had it " all
the while, - for he was a knowing old head, and he
had a habit of testing other people's knowledge of a
subject before bringing out his own.  "But I sha' n't
tell; for if it gets out I shall lose the honor of the
discovery. I'11 send the word, with the etymology,
to one of the big-dictionary makers. For you won't
find it in any dictionary as a name applied to the
foreman of a glass-house. "You'll find'GAFFER;
AN OLD MAN,' gafer and gammer being ancient abbreviations of grandfather and grandmother."
"I have it! I have it!" cried Lawrence, in his
turn, having caught the bait his uncle threw out; for
it was also the Doctor's habit, in keeping back his
knowledge of a question, to let fall hints which
should lead his young friends to solve it for themselves, thus developing their thinking faculties, and fixing more securely in their minds what they learned.




THE "GAFFER."               31
" What, young man! have you got my secret away
from me? Prove it."
"Gaffer used to mean grandfather, or old man.
Now, in some shops, the boss is called old man.
Just so, I suppose, he used to be called gaffer; and
the name has stuck to him, even after its original
meaning has been forgotten."
"Very well! capital! But why is it that it is
applied only to the glass-house foreman? "
That Lawrence could not explain. But the gaffer
himself had an idea on that point, which, coming
from one of the name and trade, was certainly entitled to consideration.
" I imagine," he said, " that generally the foremen
of glass-houses were older men than the bosses of
other trades, for it takes a man who has spent his
life in the business, and grown gray in it, to take the
management of it. I believe there is no other trade
that requires so much care and experience; that must
have been especially the case before our modern improvements in building furnaces. Then again, even
if other foremen were called gaffers, they might have
lost the name, as it went out of use outside of the
shop. But while the men of other trades have
changed their habits and expressions to suit the
times, glass-makers, until within a few years, never
changed anything. That was owing to their exclusiveness. They were a class by themselves. Their
art was a wonderful one; it was the most ancient
of arts, - it was thought perfect, and not to be im



32         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
proved; they were jealous of its being known to any
that were not regularly initiated into it; and so they
kept it shut up from the world, and surrounded by
mystery, almost as much as if they had been members of a secret society."
"Well," laughed the Doctor, "three heads are better than one, and I think, together, we have sifted out
the meaning of the word gaffer pretty thoroughly.
And now for getting at the secrets of this mystic
order.  Gaffer, what have you got to show us?
Lawrence, what shall we see first?"
"Let's see where the coal goes, since we have begun with the coal," said Lawrence.
"Then you'd like to see the cave," said the
gaffer.
II.
A VISIT TO THE CAVE.
LAWRENCE had no more distinct idea of what a
glass-house cave was, than he had had of a gaffer.
But cave sounded romantic. It suggested the subterranean, - something deep and dark and mysterious. So he said, boldly, that he should like very
much to see the cave.
"Come with me," said the gaffer. "We use coal
for various purposes, but the bulk of it goes the way
I'11 show you."
They were going towards one of the great towering chimneys. But, just before reaching it, the gaf



A VISIT TO THE CAVE.           33
THE A Ei
THE CAVE.
fer, to Lawrence's great delight, turned suddenly and
stlpped down into a passage that dived (romantically speaking) deep into the earth. The lad and the
Doctor followed, leaving daylight and the upper air
behind them, and now saw before them a great glow
of fire shining in the midst of surrounding darkness.
That is to say, in the language of plain fact, they de2~                       c




34         AMONG TEE GLASS-MAKERS.
scended a flight of steps into a sort of cellar, from
which, I regret to say, daylight was not wholly excluded, and found themselves-   But we will let
the gaffer speak.
"Here is where we get our draught. We are now
under the large chimney, -cone, we call it. It is
supported by these piers, Right in the centre, between them, you see that horizontal grate, with the
fire from above shining through; that is in the bottom of the furnace, — what we call the eye."
"It's an awful, fiery-red eye!" said Lawrence.
"Don't it look like some horrible, one-eyed dragon,
shut up there, and glaring down at us through those
iron bars? "
"Not at all; not in the least," said the Doctor,
who could be dreadfully prosaic when he saw young
people inclined to be too romantic. "It looks to
me like a very hot fire, I should think your grates
would burn out fast."
"They last longer than one would suppose," said
the gaffer. " Iron bars like these will stand a couple
of years. The draught of cold air rushing up through
them, and the dead cinders accumulating, keep them
comparatively cool."
"How do you get rid of the clinkers?" said Lawrence, who remembered his bitter experience cleaning
the stoves at home. "I suppose you let the fire go
out once in a while."
"We let this fire go down about once in five or
six years," said the gaffer. "Then it takes three




A VISIT TO THE CAVE.             5
weeks' steady firing up to get a heat we can work
with."
"Three weeks!" exclaimed Lawrence, astonished.
"Then it would hardly pay to let the fire go down for
the clinkers!"
"As for them, we just slip the grate one side, and
cut'em off from the sides of the eye with an instrument we drive up from below. We never let the fire
go down till the furnace burns out. The furnace is
built inside the cone."
"And where do you melt your glass?"
"In pots set into the furnace, just overhead here,
as I will show you by and by. Our glass pots are
closed in, so that no impurities from the fire can get
into them. That's the way pots have to be arranged,
where flint glass is made. But in furnaces where
they make common green glass, which they are not
so particular about, the pots are left open at the top,
for the advantage of getting the direct action of the
heat on the melting materials. That lets the flux
run over into the fire sometimes, and that spoils the
furnace; so that green-glass furnaces have to shut
down about once every year."
Just then a being who seemed (to the imagination
of the lad, at least, — the Doctor had forgotten his
Arabian Nights some years since), — a being who
seemed the dark genie of the place, advanced from
some dismal recess in which he had lain concealed,
and thrust a ponderous iron spear, or lance, through
the bars, directly into the eye of Lawrence's dragon,




36         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
bringing down from it a sudden shower of fiery tears
that lighted up the obscurity. In other words, nearer,
perhaps, to the literal truth, a strong, curly-headed,
grimy fellow came out from one of the coal chambers
under the cone, and gave the fire a poke through
the grate, - using an extraordinarily long and strong
poker, and fetching down, well, I think we may say,
without being too fanciful, a meteoric rain of live
embers, like the sparks from an exploded rocket.
The being retreated into the darkness; and now
Lawrence beheld a wonderful piece of magic, or
optical illusion. He noticed that the opening between
the piers, beneath the furnace, extended a long way
beyond, forming a sort of subterranean gallery,
awfully gloomy, to be sure, except that now the very
counterpart of his black genie, who had just thrust
the iron into the dragon's eye, appeared, and thrust
up a.similar iron into a similar eye, and brought
down a similar shower of flaming tears at the end of
the vista. The whole thing looked so much like a
reflection, ii a wizard's glass, of the scene he had just
witnessed, — occurring a few moments behind the
usual time when reflections in earthly mirrors take
place, - that he would hardly have been surprised to
see phantom images of himself, his uncle, and the
gaffer suddenly make their appearance at the second
genie's elbow.
I am sorry to add that the worthy gaffer immediately dispelled the pleasing illusion by saying, " The
cave extends under both cones; there is another open



A VISIT TO THE CAVE.            37
ing at the farther end, opposite to this. You see the
other fireman poking the other grate."
"Where do you put in the coal?" asked the Doctor.
"I'11 show you. Matthew!"
It was rather disappointing to Lawrence to see his
swart genie answer to a Christian name, and to
observe, as he came near, facing them in the glow of
the furnace fire, that he was, after all, only a harmless, good-natured fellow-creature, notwithstanding
the coal-dust that blackened him.
"Open the teaze-hole," said the gaffer.
Matthew led the way towards one of the black
coal-chambers, and showed a deep, square-shaped
orifice, leading up, by an inclined plane, through the
thick brick ribs of the cone, into the furnace. It
was closed at the farther end by a half-ignited mass
of soft coal, which had been packed into it, to stop
the draught in that direction.
"This is the teaze-hole, - though how it ever got
that name is more than I know," said the gaffer.
"Look up in there, and you'll see him open it."
Matthew took a heavy, long-handled iron implement, called a rake, and shoved it clanging up into
the passage, removing enough of the soft glowing
mass to let the visitors look in and see the dazzling
regions of fire beyond, and hear the rushing of air
and roaring of flame in the freshly opened vent.
Then he tossed a few shovelfuls of coal into the
mouth, and shoved them up with his rake through




38         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
the teaze-hole into the furnace, to show how the thing
was done; then the vent was closed again with coal,
as before.
"I see you burn bituminous coal here," said the
Doctor. "How much a day?"
" This furnace takes about forty tons a week. The
other one, which is not quite as large, takes less.
The two average upwards of ten tons a day."
Lawrence asked what was the use of so high a
chimney.
"That's to make the draught. The higher the
chimney, the greater the draught, generally speaking."
" Can you tell why? " the Doctor asked Lawrence.
" I know heated air expands, and so becomes lighter
than the same bulk of cold air. Confine it in a
chimney, and that makes a suction from below; - as
the hot air rises, cold air rushes in to fill its place."
"But why will a tall chimney make a stronger
draught than a low one?"
"I suppose," said Lawrence, "the hot air keeps
drawing, until it gets out, and is free. It's like a
string of horses attached to anything; the longer the
string, the more they will pull. But I should think,"
he added, " that a chimney might be built too high.
If the top gets very cold, I should think that would
cool the column of air; and deaden the draught;- it
would be like having one horse after another drop
down at the end of the string."
"That, I believe, is the fact," said the gaffer. "A
sheet-iron funnel as high as this cone, exposed to the




A VISIT TO THE CAVE.           39
weather, would make no draught at all to speak of.
If you build high, you must build thick, so that the
interior of the chimney will hold its warmth all the
way up."
"How did people ever manage without chimneys?"
said Lawrence; "for I read the other day that they
were unknown in ancient times, and that they were
considered a luxury, which only the rich could indulge
in, even in the age of Queen Elizabeth."
"They made a fire in the middle of the room,
wigwam fashion, and let the smoke get out through
a hole in the roof the best way it could," -aid the
Doctor.
"Glass-makers must have labored under an inconvenience," said the gaffer. "I have a little book
called'Reminiscences of Glass-Making,' which has
drawings in it of the old-fashioned Italian and French
glass furnaces. They have no high chimneys; but
the smoke is shown coming out of short flues into
the room where the blowers are at work.  Their
draught must have been very uncertain. A fire must
have air."
"It is estimated," remarked the Doctor, "that for
every pound of bituminous coal near two hundred
cubic feet of common air are required to make an
economical fire, -that is, to mix with and burn all
the gases; and that, in a fire like this, the weight of
the air consumed is greater than that of all the other
materials that go into the furnace, - coal, ore, everything.'




40         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
Lawrence looked astonished. "In that case," said
he, " when people get in their winter's supply of fuel,
and grumble at the cost, they might console themselves by thinking that the biggest part of what they
burn they get for nothing; it don't have to come in
carts, and they don't have to settle the bill for it."
"And boys of your age don't get the back-ache
shovelling it in at the cellar window," said the Doctor. "It comes, as a great many of our blessings do,
so bountifully and so invisibly, that we don't appreciate it. It is well to stop and think of such things
sometimes."
"Now," said the gaffer, "I'11 show you where the
melting-pots are made."
III.
THE MELTING-POTS.
EMERGING from the cave, they crossed a corner of
the yard, and entered a long brick building, in the
first roomx of which they found a man at work, on a
low bench, in the midst of piles of rubbish.
"Here is where the clay of the pots that have been
used up in the furnaces is broken up and cleaned.
This man, as you see, takes up a piece at a time, and
knocks off the glazed side, and the side that has been
in contact with the fire.  Then it is ready to be
pounded up, and used over again."
They passed on to a second room, which was long




THE MELTING-POTS.            41
and low and gloomy, and contained several bins, in
one of which a man appeared, balancing himself on
a bar laid across it, like a gymnast.
"It takes the very best quality of clay for meltingpots," said the gaffer. " This comes from Stourbridge,
in England. It is first ground in that hopper, and
mixed with the burnt clay, then the whole is shovelled into one of these bins, and worked."
They turned to the gymnast, who, Lawrence now
saw, was treading a mass of moist clay with his naked
feet. Before him was an empty space, extending
gcross the bin, into which he presently got down, and
shovelled back, upon the heap he had been treading,
more clay from a dense mass at the opposite end.
Then he got up, steadying his movements by means
of the bar, and began to tread again.
"That don't seem to be very lively work," said
Lawrence.
"It's better than a treadmill," replied the man.
"There's variety about it. For variety I go to shovelling, and then for variety I go to treading."
"But you don't keep at this all the while, — do
you?"
"When I begin a batch, I' never leave it, except to
eat and sleep, till it's finished. I can't give it any
peace."?
" How long do you work it?"
"About seven weeks." The man looked up at a
chalk-mark on the wall. "I have been five weeks
on this."




42          AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS,
TREADING THE CLAY.
"Is it possible," said the Doctor, "that clay requires so much manual, or I may say pedal, labor in
its preparation?"
"Nothing else will do," said the gaffer. "Machinery has been tried, but there is nothing like the naked
foot."




THE MELTING-POTS.            43
" Could you make as durable pots without putting
in the burnt clay?"
"Pots made of raw clay alone would n't stand at
all; they would crack. We must put in the old burnt
clay to temper them. Now come up stairs."
As the gaffer threw open the door of an upper
room, Lawrence fancied that he was taking them to
visit a small menagerie. The loft appeared filled with
monsters. They resembled exceedingly chubby young
elephant calves, as much as anything. But, what was
most extraordinary, they were standing about the
room, a herd of fifty or more, holding up short round
necks, all with their heads cut off! At a second
glance he discovered that they were never designed
to have heads, or legs either; and that the great hole
he found in each pitifully uplifted headless neck was
nothing more nor less than the usual opening into the
- melting-pot.
These were the finished pots. Others were unfinished. There were two workmen in the room, one of
whom was cutting off slices of a thick clay loaf,
and making them over into rolls. He cut the
slices by means of a wire furnished with a wooden
handle at each end; and he shaped the rolls with his
hands. The rolls- which looked like short, moist sausages, laid side by side on the table - were taken by
the second workman, and used in building up the pots.
Lawrence noticed that he worked but a few minutes on one, then went to another, and he inquired
the reason.




44          AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
Hil; 




THE MELTING-POTS.             45
"If I should build a pot right up from the bottom
with soft clay," replied the man, "it would all sink
down to the floor with its own weight. We must
leave each pot to dry a little before we add much
to it."
Lawrence noticed how skilfully he applied one end
of a roll to the mass, and pressed it in,- working it
towards him, around the edge of the pot; leaving no
chance for an air-bubble to hide away in it, and expand and crack the clay when afterwards subjected
to heat; shaping and smoothing all with his hand,
and rounding the top into a dome. The boy watched
and admired, and said at length he thought it " quite
an art."
The man had just pressed the end of a roll upon
the back of one of his monsters, and he left it sticking out ludicrously like a tail, while he answered,
"It's no art; it's only a notion. It takes a little
gumption, and a deal of patience, - that's all."
" I'd rather be you up here than that man treading
down stairs; you have some exercise for your wits,"
said Lawrence.
"I'd sooner be the man down stairs," replied the
artist. "He has no care on his mind but to hear
the bell, and go to dinner. But I'm all the while
in trouble, — fearing my pots won't come out right,
dreading they may crack, or something, and I'11 be
shown the gate."  And, seizing hold of the tail, he
proceeded to work it around towards the side until
it had disappeared in the mass.




46         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
" How long will such a pot as this last?"
"There's no telling anything about it.  It may
crack in a week, or it may run four or five months.
Two made just alike, of the same batch of clay, will
act that way. There's no help for it, but just to
break'em up and work'em over again."
"They are like some people I know," said the Doctor, "who are always in the furnace of affliction, or
being broken and trodden underfoot, and made ready
for another turn at the fire. Stourbridge clay is
much like human clay, after all."
" But this clay gets a little rest in here," said the
gaffer. "We like to have a pot a year old before we
use it. When one is wanted, we lower it on a truck
through this trap door, and run it into a pot arch,
which is nothing but a great oven, or kiln, where it is
heated by degrees, and left about a week, and then
taken out red-hot, and run into its place in an arch of
one of the great furnaces."
Lawrence said he should think that must be an
operation worth seeing; — a heavy pot like that, redhot! "How much does it weigh?"
"About two thousand pounds."
"And how much does it hold? " asked the Doctor.
"Something like twenty-three hundred-weight of
material," said the gaffer.




WHAT GLASS IS MADE OF.          47
IV.
WHAT GLASS IS MADE OF.
IN the yard below they found a man knocking the
head out of a hogshead, which proved to be full of
broken glass.
"This we buy to melt over again. Good flint glass
is worth to us about two cents a pound. This cask
came from New Orleans; some of it was perhaps
picked up by the rag-pickers. Did you ever watch
them turning over piles of rubbish, or raking the
gutters with their hooks? You'11 see them carefully
fish out bits of flint glass, and put them into their
bags, along with old rags, old bones, and pieces of old
coal. The old rags go to the paper-makers or shoddymakers; and the old glass, and perhaps some of the
old. bones, come to us."
"What do you do with old bones?" asked Lawrence, seeing a large pile of them in a corner of the
yard.
"We use many different substances in making different kinds of glass. We use bones - or phosphate
of lime, which is what bones are mostly composed of
— in making opaque white glass. Now come into
the cullet-room."
"Cullet?.-what is cullet?"
The gaffer showed two old women sorting over
heaps of broken glass, and said " That is cullet."
"Where did you ever get such a name? "




48         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
The gaffer could not tell. But the Doctor said it
was probably the French cueillette (from the same root
as our word cull), meaning a gathering, a picked-up
lot, a collection (also from the same root), and said he
thought it applied very aptly to such a curious heap.
"A vast quantity accumulates about a glass-factory," said the gaffer. "Sometimes you would think
more than half goes into the waste-pans, when we are
blowing. But nothing is wasted. As the old, burntout pots are good to mix with fresh clay in making
new ones, so cullet, melted over again with the
other materials, improves the quality of the product.
Now for the other materials."
"What! do you use sugar?" said Lawrence, as
they came to a number of upright open barrels.
" Taste it," said the gaffer.
" Sand!" exclaimed Lawrence,' the moment his
fingers touched it. "But don't it look like pulverized
white sugar? Where do you get it?"
"From Berkshire County. It is washed there, and
put up wet, to prevent it from sifting out of the barrels. Here we are drying it in this sand-oven," —
and the gaffer showed a heap spread out on a large,
pan-shaped table, heated from beneath. "Sand," he
added, "is the principal article in the manufacture
of flint glass."
" Why do you call it flint?"
"In the English factories," said the gaffer, "it used
to be made of flint stone, broken up and ground. But
in this country glass-makers found sand much easier




WHAT GLASS IS MADE OF.           49
to be obtained. They got it at first from Demerara,
in South America; homeward-bound ships brought
it as ballast. But the War of 1812 interfered with
commerce, and compelled them to look at home for
their sand, as for many other things. At first they
used the sand of Plymouth Beach, until better was
found at Morris River, in New Jersey. But a few
years ago sand of the first quality turned up in Berkshire County. This is almost pure silica. Silica is
the article required, whether it occurs in flint or
sand."
" And what do you put with it to make glass?"
"You can make glass of two materials,-silica
and an alkali. But it is good for nothing. It has no
solidity. It will dissolve in hot water..To give it
density and hardness, we add either lime, or- this
material."
" Red sand?" said Lawrence.  "No, this is n't
sand!"- putting his hand into the barrel. "What
is it?"
"Red-lead," said the Doctor.
"Ground and sifted, ready for use," added the gaffer. "It is not ground fine, like the red-lead painters
use. This or litharge - which is another form of almost the same substance, and answers the same purpose -is used in making flint glass.
" But what is red-lead? What is it made of?"
"It is made of common lead, such as you run
bullets out of. You've noticed, in melting it, that a
thin skin always forms on the.lead, which you call
3                         D




50          AMONG THE GLAS~-MAKERS.
dross, and throw away? That is a result of the
mixture of the oxygen of the air with the lead it
comes in contact with; that is, so much of the lead
is oxidized. It is on its way to become litharge, or
red-lead, which is lead oxidized to the highest degree.
To make the oxide, they melt lead on the floor of
a large oven.m  It becomes a bright lake of melted
metal, at first; it is stirred, and kept burning, until
the last appearance of anything like liquid lead is
worked out of it.  Some glass-factories make their
own red-lead; but ours comes from Galena, in just
this shape, as you see it."
"In what proportion do you mix your materials
for flint glass? "
"Three parts of sand, two of red-lead, and one of
alkali, is about as simple a statement as I can make
of it. That will make you good strong glass. But
there will be a tirtge of green in it, such as you see
in a pane of common window-glass if you look across
the edge of it. That comes from a minute quantity
of iron which is contained even in the purest silica.
A little arsenic and oxide of manganese take it out,
or, as we say, decolorize it. Too much lead gives a
yellowish cast to the glass.  The oxides of other
metals are used to give different colors. In making
different kinds of glass, the materials may be varied
indefinitely.  Boracic acid may take the place of
silica. Oxide of zinc may take the place of red-lead;
in window and plate glass, lime takes its place. A
variety of other substances are used to produce cer



WHAT GLASS IS MADE OF.           51
tain effects. But the common transparent glass-ware
used in every house is the kind we call flint, and it is
composed of the materials I have named, -silica,
oxide of lead, and the alkalies, with arsenic and oxide
of manganese to decolorize it."
" What do you use for alkalies?" asked the Doctor.
"Pearlash and saltpetre, or pearlash and soda.'Here is where we purify the saltpetre."
The gaffer showed a'tank, the bottom and sides of
which were thickly incrusted with beautiful large
crystals. "The saltpetre," he explained, "is dissolved
in hot water. The liquid is skimmed, and allowed to
cool. As the crystals form, they exclude all impurities, which are drained off with the remaining liquid.
The pearlash is purified in a different way. It is
dissolved, like the saltpetre; but the impurities, except
what are skimmed off, settle to the bottom, in what
we call slurry, which we sell to chemical works. The
liquid is then evaporated in these large caldrons, until
only the dry, clear pearlash remains."
The gaffer then showed where the several materials
were all thrown together into a tank, and mixed.
"They are then ready to be loaded upon this carriage,
and taken to the blowing-house, - which we will
now go and see."
This was delightful news to Lawrence, who was
getting tired of these preliminaries, and eager to
witness the wonders of blowing and working the
melted material.




52         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
V.
THE GLASS-BLOWERS.
THE gaffer led the way into a spacious building,
full of strange lights and flames and human life.
Furnaces were glowing; men and boys were at work
before the fires, or darting to and fro; some were
blowing fiery bubbles, which'put to shame all the
soap-bubbles in the world; others were shaping the
glowing metal; there were noises like the reports of
pocket-pistols, and sounds of clanging iron, where
boys were knocking off cold glass from the ends of
iron rods into small sheet-iron carriages.
Altogether the scene was so dazzling and confusing
that Lawrence at first thought there was little chance
of his learning any more about glass-making here
than he knew already. First, one had a bubble, then
another had it; then it had disappeared, and the man
who he thought had it was quietly at work on a
lamp-chimney or a goblet, while he knew no more
how he came by it than if it had been produced by
magic.
"It is magic!" he Exclaimed.
"That was, in old times, the popular notion with
regard to glass-making; and I believe glass-blowers
rather favored the superstition," said the Doctor.
" They used to dress in the skins of beasts, to protect themselves from the heat, when they were setting pots in the furnaces," said the gaffer; "and they




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.            53
wore great blue or green goggles on their eyes; and
sometimes, after the job was done, and they wanted a
good time, - glass-blowers have always been rather
fond Qf a good time,- they would rush out into the
village in their outlandish rig, and frighten the
natives, like so many demons."
"But they were a superstitious class themselves,"
said the Doctor. "They believed in the salamander,
which was supposed to be generated by the flames
of a furnace that had been kept burning a great
while, and to live in them. When any workman disappeared mysteriously, the salamander was supposed to
have rushed out and caught him, and carried him intb
his den.'Or was it only a joke of theirs, gaffer? "
"The worst salamander that ever. carried off a'glassblower was the fiery monster we call rum," gaid the
gaffer. "A good many have been carried off by that,
and I guess that is what they meant."
"Glass-makers have had the reputation of being
hard drinkers; why is it? " said the Doctor.
" They are a hard-working class; but their work is
irregular. They have plenty of money, and plenty of
leisure time to spend it,- a dangerous circumstance
for a man or a boy, in or out of -the glass-house," added
the gaffer, with a look at Lawrence. "But glassmakers have improved in this respect of late years.
Look around you; have n't we a pretty respectable
set of men at work here? "
While the Doctor was looking at the men, Lawrence took a general view of the building.  He




54         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
counted four separate furnaces. Two were on one
side, and seemed to be merely large ovens with flaming mouths. These he was told were the "leers" where
the newly made glass-ware was annealed. Then
near each end of the building, standing by the great
chimneys, like dwarfs beside giants, were two small
round furnaces, blazing at several mouths, called "gloryholes," at which men and boys appeared constantly
heating and reheating articles of glass to be worked.
The great chimneys themselves, however, were what
most astonished Lawrence. They resembled circular
brick towers, with port-holes of fire; their tops disappearing through the high, broad-arched, strongly
raftered roof. Into the port-holes men were thrusting iron rods, and taking out lumps of melted metal,
and shaping them on tables, or blowing them into
globes, or dropping them into moulds. " These then,"
he thought, "are the big furnaces; and those portholes must be the necks of the melting-pots."
"We are now standing right over the cave," said
the gaffer.  "This furnace has eleven arches; the
other has eight; and in each arch is set one of these
pots, such as you saw. The crown of the furnace is
built over them, so as to reflect the heat down on to
them, and the flues carry it all around them. Look
in and see the melted metal."
Lawrence, shielding his eyes with his hand, advanced to one of the port-holes, and saw what seemed
a pot of liquid fire within, of intensely dazzling
brightness.




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.            55
" How long does it take to melt down your raw
materials to that shape?" he asked, drawing back,
with flushed face.
"We don't fill a pot all at once," said the gaffer.
"We put in about a quarter or a third of a charge at
a time; then, when that melts, another lot. When
the pots are full, they are closed up, and we push the
fires; the materials are fused and mixed by a sort of
boiling caused by the escape of carbonic acid gas.
When the materials are of poor quality, a sort of scum,
called sandiver, or glass-gall, rises to the top, and
must be skimmed off. The metal is fined, as we say,
by keeping it for forty or fifty hours at a much higher
temperature than when we finally begin to work it
After the bubbles are all out of it, and it has become
what we call plain, that is, clear glass, we let it cool
a little, regulating the fires so as to keep it in the best
condition for working. It requires a deal of care and
judgment to get it right every time. We blow four
days in the week. Friday and Saturday we clear up,
fill the pots, set a new one, if one has been broken,
and get ready for the next week's blowing. Sunday
night the glass in the pots is plain; and at one o'clock
the first set of hands come on."
"In the night? how do you like that?" Lawrence
asked a workman who was lighting his pipe of tobacco with a piece of red-hot glass.
"Well enough," said the man. "I does my work
and I gits my sleep. We works from one o'clock at
night till six in the morning, then we goes home and




56         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
to bed, and t'other set of hands comes on. We
comes on again at one in the afternoon, and works
till six in the evening; then t' other set takes our
place, and works till midnight."
"How does the work agree with you? I could n't
stand the heat," said Lawrence, retreating still farther
from the furnace.
" Glass-blowers is as healthy and long-lived as any
class of men," was the reply. "I neyer takes cold,
though some does."
So saying, the workman, having lighted his short
clay pipe, took his long iron pipe, - it was, perhaps,
five feet long and an inch in diameter, - and thrust
one end of it into the neck of a pot, and commenced
turning it.
"That is what we call gathering," said the gaffer.
When the workman had got w]at he judged to be a
sufficient quantity of the meltedi metal on the end of
the iron,- it was a lump somewhat larger than a
butternut, - he took it out, and rolled it on a small,
polished iron table, which the gaffer said was a
marver.
"A  corruption of marbre, the French word for
marble," said the Doctor. "The English workmen
got a good many terms from the French and Italians,
along with their trade. The marver used to be made
of marble or stone, did n't it, gaffer? and the name
has gone over to the iron slab."
The workman, having reduced the soft lump to a
shape suitable for his purpose, put the other end of




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.           57
PREPARING TO BLOW..
the pipe to his lips, and began to blow. Lawrence,
watching closely, could see a little bubble of air push
out into the lump, which at the same time began to
swell into a bulb. The man continued to blow, and
the lump continued to expand. Now he held it down
near the floor, and swung it to and fro, still blowing
at intervals, and increasing its size, while the motion
3*




58         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
stretched'it until it had become a large bulb with a
long neck. Then he touched the end to the ground,
to prevent it from expanding farther in that direction; in the mean while the thin glass of the neck had
become cool, and ceased to enlarge; so that now,
when he blew again, the thicker and softer glass of
the sides of the bulb swelled out into a more spherical
form. It was now shaped something like a small
gourd, hanging by its straight stem from the end of
the pipe, and the glass, which had been at a white
heat at first, had become transparent at the neck, and
a dull lurid red in the bulb. The workman now took
an instrument in his hand, and pinched the thick soft
glass at the extremity of the bulb into a button, like
a blow at the end of the gourd.
All this was done in scarcely more than a minute's
time; and Lawrence was amused to observe that the
blower, while producing these magical effects with his
iron pipe, had never once taken the clay pipe out of
his mouth.
" How can you blow and smoke at the same time?"
he asked, as the man stood twirling his glass gourd in
the air, waiting for a boy to come and take it. " I
should think you would blow the smoke and tobacco
out of your pipe."
" O, I just claps my tongue over the end on't, and
stops the hole, when I blows," was the answer.
A boy now ran up and took the iron tube with the
glass on its end. Lawrence followed him, convinced
that the only way of learning how any article was




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.            59
made was to watch it from the beginning through
each stage of the process.
The boy handed it to a workman sitting on a chairshaped bench with strong, straight arms, across which
he laid the iron, with the glass at his right hand.
Turning the rod, by rolling'it under his left hand, like
a lathe, he gave the button another pinch, and then
knocked it off. The end of the gourd now had a
small hole in it.
"Notice the instrument he uses," said the gaffer.
"It. looks like a pair of sheep-shears," said Lawrence, "only the blades are duller. What do you
call it?"
" The old name, pucellas, has about gone out of use
with us. We call it simply a pair of tools. They are,
pre-eminently, the glass-blower's tools, — he shapes
everything with them."
The workman in the mean while had handed the
pipe back to the boy, who thrust the glass into the
flames of one of the "glory-holes."
"It is coal tar that gives that hot flash," said the
gaffer. "In the other glory-hole furnace, over yonder,
we burn rosin. He is heating the glass again, so that
it can be shaped."
It was but the work of a few moments; and the
glass was handed, glowing, back to the workman,
who had in the mean while taken the button off from
another precisely similar glass, which had been handed him by another boy. This he now exchanged for
the first. He laid the pipe across the arms of his




60         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
bench, as before, and, turning it rapidly under his
hand, pushed the point of one blade of his sheepshears, or "tools," into the hole left by the knockedoff button. Having opened it a little, he. inserted
both points, and gradually enlarged the hole, now to
the size of a penny, now to that of a dollar, and
lastly to that of a little tin cap that he fitted to a
rim, which, in working, he had turned outward upon
the edge of the glass. He used the cap as a measure,
and it was laid aside when the rim was found to be
of the right circumference.  It was less than a
minute' s work, and that end of the gourd was finished. But it was no longer a gourd; it was a lampchimney.
Another boy now came forward with another iron
rod, closely resembling the blowing-pipe, except that
it had no hole through it.
"That is what we call a ponty or pontil," said the
gaffer.
On the end of the ponty was a little wheel of redhot glass. Applied to the bottom of the lamp-chimney, it fitted the opening. The workman then touched
the top of the chimney, where it joined the blowingpipe, with cold steel, and cracked it off. The chimney was then taken away, sticking to the glass wheel
on the end of the ponty.
"That is what we call reversing it," said the gaffer.
The top of the chimney was now heated at the
glory-hole, as the bottom had previously been, and
afterwards, when soft, smoothed and shaped by the




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.          61
workman. This done, he gave the opposite end of the
ponty a gentle knock, and the chimney fell off from
the little glass wheel. One boy took it up on a stick,
and placed it in a box packed nearly full of chimneys; while another'reheated the glass wheel at the
end of the ponty, and a third carried a blowing-pipe
to one of the little sheet-iron carriages, or " pans," and
knocked off the cold glass left by the last article that
had been blown upon it.
Lawrence now watched another blower. He gathered on his pipe a larger lump of metal than the
first, rounded it on a marver, and blew it into a surprisingly large and beautiful bubble, which put on all
the colors of the dying dolphin, as the light shone
upon its cooling surface.  He held it down and
swung it, to lengthen it; or he held it above his head,
to flatten it at the poles; he whirled it, to perfect the
sphere; he pinched a button out of the thick soft
glass that seemed forming into a large drop at the
end of it; and finally exchanged it, pipe and all, for
a clean pipe, with which he proceeded to blow
another.
A second workman then took the bubble, knocked
off the button, and fashioned it very much as his fellow had fashioned the lamp-chimney. But, instead of
coming out of his hands a lamp-chimney, it came out
a beautiful, large lamp-globe. This a boy took, and
hastened with it to one of the leers, or annealing
ovens.
A third was blowing a small balloon of glass, giv



62         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
ing to it gradually the form of a cylinder, — flattening
the end by spatting it down smartly upon a marver
on the ground. When reversed on a ponty, it was so
large and heavy, and it swayed and staggered so, that
Lawrence thought surely it would break off and fall.
But the boy who had it, by skilfully balancing it, and
turning the ponty, kept it on, until the glass had hardened sufficiently to remain in position, while he
heated the opposite end at a glory-hole. This being
shaped, the article turned out to be a glass jar of
large size.
In surprising contrast with this was the making of
that most exquisite of all drinking-vessels, the small,
delicate wineglass.
"Watch these two men," said the gaffer.
One was blowing a thick bubble no bigger than a
thimble; the other was blowing one somewhat larger.
"They are both at work on one glass. This larger
bubble is to be the bowl. Now look."




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.           63
The blower drew out the soft metal from the end
of the bubble into a slender stem.  The other
blower now brought his smaller bubble, stuck the
bottom of it to the end of the stem, and then by
a touch of cold steel, cracked it off from his pipe.
The chief blower now had at the end of his pipe
two bubbles, with a stem between them, and with a
hole in the end of the outer and smaller bubble.
This, softened at the furnace door, was not only
opened by the tools, but turned completely inside out,




64         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
and flattened into a perfect little wheel on the end of
the stem, thus becoming the foot of the wineglass.
The glass was then reversed on a ponty, and taken
to a third workman, with now a hole in the larger
bubble, where it, in its turn, had been cracked off
from the pipe. This hole was enlarged by the tools,
and the rough edge of the soft glass trimmed off with
a pair of scissors, as a tailor would trim a bit of cloth.
The half-closed bowl was then held in the furnace
until it seemed soft and tremulous as melting wax,
and was thrown open to its proper wineglass' shape
simply by the centrifugal force given to it by the
ponty whirled in the workman's skilful fingers. A
few light touches afterwards, and the article was perfected,- as delicate and graceful a little gem of a
glass as could be made anywhere in the world.
"There, Doctor!" said the gaffer, "you might give




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.             65
the remainder of your natural life to the business
and you could never do that! That man began to
work in glass when he was a boy, and it has become
second nature with him, like speaking his native
language. He has handled the blowing-pipe and the
ponty until they are like parts of his own hands.
He almostfeels the glass on the end of them."
The Doctor expressed his suprise at the quickness
of the operation, and the simplicity and cheapness of
the tools employed.
"All' the tools he uses," rejoined the gaffer, " do not
cost more than fifteen dollars, and they will last him
his life."
"What is this? " said Lawrence, picking up a piece
of glass from the floor. "It. looks like a broken
thermometer-tube."
"It was blown for one," said the gaffer.
"Blown? - so small! " exclaimed Lawrence. "I
can't find any hole in it."
"It has a hole — or bore, as we call it - of the
usual size; but it is flat. That is to make a very
little mercury look to be a good deal. Do you see
a narrow white strip running the length of the
tube?"
Lawrence saw it, and said he had often observed
the stripe in the backs of thermometers, but had
never learned what it was for.
"It is a background to see the mercury against.
Would you like to see such a tube made? Come
here. Watch this man."
E




66         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
With delight and curiosity Lawrence watched.
The man was gathering a lump of metal from one of
the pots. He blew into it gently, and shaped it on a
marver, flattening it until it resembled in form and
size the part of a sword-hilt that is grasped by the
hand.
"In flattening it," said the gaffer, "he flattened the
bubble of air he had blown into it."  Lawrence
looked, and could see the bubble, about as broad as
his finger, extending through the glass. "That is to
be the bore of the thermometer,- though of itself it
is now larger than two or three thermometer tubes.
Now they are going to put on the stripe."
A boy brought a lump of melted, opaque white
glass on a ponty. It was touched to the now hardened sword-hilt, and drawn from end to end along the
flat side, leaving a stripe about as broad as a lady's
finger.  The sword-hilt, with the stripe carefully
pressed down and hardened upon it, was now plunged
into a pot of melted glass, and thickly coated; the
soft exterior was rounded on a marver, until the
entire body of glass, enclosing the stripe and the flattened bore, was in size and shape a little longer and
considerably larger than a banana.
This was now slowly heated to a melting state.
Then came forward a boy with a ponty, bearing on its
end a piece of glass resembling an inverted conical
inkstand. This he set upright on the ground, the
bottom of the inkstand uppermost. The blower, with
the melting lump, now advanced, and held it over the




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.            67
ponty, until the soft mass drooped down and touched
the bottom of the inkstand, to which it adhered.
The man and the boy held the lump a moment between them; then, at a word of command, the boy
shouldered his ponty, like a very large staff with a
very small bundle on the end of it, and set out to
travel. As he ran in one direction, into a work-room,
the man backed off in the other, the glowing lump
stretching between them, like some miraculous kind
of spruce gum. In a minute they were seventy or
eighty feet apart, with a gleaming cord of glass,
smaller than a pipe-stem, sagging between them.
This was presently lowered, laid out at its full length
upon the ground, and broken from what was left of
the lump at the ends.
Even the Doctor, who had hitherto said little, now
expressed his astonishment and admiration, exclaiming, " It is marvellous! it is truly marvellous!"
"Of course," said the gaffer, " the bore stretches
with the tube, and keeps its flattened shape. So does
the stripe."
" But what keeps the tube of uniform size? Why
don't it break?" said LawTence.
" The reason is this. As the glass runs out thin, it
cools, and stops stretching, while it continues to draw
out the soft glass from the thicker parts at the ends.
If we wish to make a small tube, we stretch it quick,
without giving it much time to cool. To make a
large tube, we stretch slower.  Here is a piece of
barometer tubing, stretched in the same way; so is




68         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
this lot of homceopathic medicine vials." The "vials"
were a small stack of hollow glass canes, about five
feet in length, standing in a corner of the workroom, into which the visitors had followed the boy.
"Though, of course," added the gaffer, "to make
them, we don't flatten the bore, but only blow it
larger."
" Then how are vials made out of these tubes?"
"They are cut into pieces of the right length, then
the bottoms are melted and closed in by means of a
common blow-pipe, such as chemists use."
Lawrence was about to ask a similar question with
regard to the thermometers, when a man came along,
and, stooping, commenced cutting the long tube into
uniform lengths of about five feet, and packing them
together into a narrow, long box.
"These," said the gaffer, "he sends to his shop in
Boston, -for he is a thermometer-maker; there they
are cut up into tubes of the right length; an end of
each one is melted and blown out into a bulb, - the
tube itself serving as a very small blowing-pipe. To
avoid getting moisture into'the bulb, air from a small
india-rubber bag is used, instead of breath from the
mouth. As the bag is squeezed at'one end, the bulb
swells at the other."
"Then how is the mercury put in? So small a
bore!" said Lawrence, trying to find it with a pin
point.
"The glass is heated, and that expands the air in
it, and expels the greater part of it. As the air that




THE GLASS-BLOWERS.             69
is left cools and contracts, it is made to suck in the
mercury. To expel the rest of the air, the mercury
is boiled in the tube. When there is enough mercury
in the tube to fill it, at as high a degree of temperature as it is expected ever to go, the end is softened,
bent over, and closed up. As the mercury cools and
contracts, it leaves a vacuum at the upper part of the
tube."
As Lawrence stood aside to make room for the boy,
who was stretching another eighty-foot tube, the
gaffer continued:"Glass beads and bugles are made in much the
same way. Glass of any desired color is used. It is
blown, and stretched into tubes a hundred feet long
or more. These are broken up into bits of the right
length for the required bead. To make a round bead,
the bits are put into a sort of mud, made of sand and
ashes, and worked about in it till the holes are filled
up. They are afterward put into a heated cylinder,
along with sand; the cylinder is made to revolve, and
the motion, with the friction of the sand, wears down
the edges of the softened glass till the beads become
round, - the sand and ashes in them preventing the
sides from flattening."




70         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
VI.
MOULDING AND PRESSING.
THE gaffer now took his visitors around to another
side of the blowing-room, and showed them the process of blowing glass into a mould. This was of castiron, and worked by a boy, who opened and shut it
by means of handles. The blower gathered the
melted glass, rolled it on a marver, blew into it
slightly, then dropped it, in a long, purse-shaped,
glowing lump, into the open mould. This was immediately closed by the boy; then the blower blew until
a bubble, pushed up on the top of the mould, expanded to the size of a football, and to the thinness
of the thinnest transparent film, and finally burst
with a loud pop, flying into shreds of tinsel, light as
feathers. The mould was then opened, and a castervial with figured sides was exposed. This was taken
up by a second boy on a "snap-dragon," — a rod
something like a ponty, but with a socket at the end
for holding articles of glass, - and carried to a gloryhole, where the round, open top was heated. It was
then passed to a workman seated in a chair, who
shaped the top, and pressed into it a piece of iron
called a "lip-maker." The top was then a mouth, and
the vial became a "vinegar," as the boys called it.
Another man was blowing "mustards," in the same
way; and a third was blowing "inks."
"Does it blow easy?" Lawrence inquired of the
last.




MOULDING AND PRESSING.         71
" It don't require much effort," said the man; and,
having his glass all ready to drop, he put the pipe
into Lawrence's hand, who lowered the stretching,
purse-shaped lump into the mould, and blew. He
blew till a bubble sprang up on the top of the mould,
and cracked like a pistol: then with a laugh gave
back the pipe to the man. The mould was opened,
and a nice little inkstand came out.
"You shall keep that to remember us by," said the
gaffer.  "But don't touch it yet! "-as Lawrence
was about to handle it. "It's hissing hot! I'll
mark it so we shall know it again."
This done he took up a handful of the glass tinsel
from a heap formed by the breaking bubbles, crushed
it, threw it in the air, and said, as it fell in a glittering shower, "This is the diamond dust ladies powdered their hair with a few years ago."
As they passed on, he continued: "You have now
seen the two processes by which blown glass is made,
- the simple blowing, which is as ancient as the time
of Moses, and the modern process of blowing into
moulds. Here is something else."
A workman, who had gathered some metal, dropped
it, without blowing at all, into an elaborately constructed mould, the several parts of which were
opened and closed by means of at least half a dozen
handles. The soft, glowing glass being securely shut
into it, the mould was shoved under a strong handpress, and a plunger brought down forcibly into it by
a man at the lever. The plunger being lifted, and




72         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
the mould opened, a cream-pitcher appeared, with the
handle, all complete.
"This," said the gaffer, "is what we call pressing.
It is claimed by some as an American invention.
Whether it is or not, it is quite modern, and it has
been carried to a higher degree of perfection in this
country than anywhere else. Here is a press that is
making a large preserve-dish, elaborately figured, a
really elegant article. It is done, you see, almost in
a moment. Here is another man working two different moulds, and turning out two hundred small preserve-plates in a minute. You can see by this how
much the use of moulds must have done towards
cheapening the price of glass. And, really," he added,
"we are making pressed glass nowadays that is almost as clear and beautiful as blown, - though of
course there is a popular prejudice in favor of the
blown article, since it is more expensive."
Lawrence asked a workman who was cutting off
the melted glass from the ponty, as it dropped into a
mould, if it "cut easy."
"Well, about as easy as stiff dough cuts. Try it."
And Lawrence, applying the shears, clipped off a
lump, which, pressed in the mould, came out a graceful goblet.




PLATING AND ANNEALING.          73
VII.
PLATING AND ANNEALING.
"Now," said the gaffer, "I believe you have seen
about everything."
"No," said Lawrence; "I have n't seen how you
make glass of two different colors, -a lamp-shade,
for instance, which is all red, perhaps, except where
there are figures of transparent glass."
"Let me see," said the gaffer, looking about him.
"We are not doing any plating to-day. But we will
do some, to show you."
Lawrence begged he would not give himself any
trouble.
"That is what I shall say when I go to visit you
some time.'Don't give yourself any trouble for me,'
I shall say to your aunt. But she will give herself
trouble, and I trust it will be a pleasure for her to do
so. Now I must give myself trouble, to show you
how glass-plating is done; and it will be a pleasure."
He gave orders to some men, who stopped the work
they were at to assist him. A piece of hard ruby
glass, previously prepared, was melted on the end of a
ponty; two soft'lumps of it were taken off on the
ends of two blowing-pipes, -" for I am going to show
you two different ways of plating," said the gaffer. " I
am going to make two ruby cups. To save the colored glass, which is costly, we put a thin plate of it on
a body of flint glass. This lump I shall put on the
4




74         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
outside of the first cup. The lump on the other pipe
will go on the inside of the second cup. Now look
sharp.
He blew the first lump into a bowl-like shape.
"This," said he, " is the shell." It was broken off,
and placed in a secure position on the ground, with
the opening uppermost. Then a lump of soft flintglass was brought, of which the gaffer blew a bubble
into the ruby shell until it filled it. The mouth of
the shell was then closed in upon the flint, and the
two completely welded into one hollow globe. This
was now made thoroughly soft at the fire, blown, reversed, opened at the end, trimmed with scissors
about the edges, and finally shaped into a cup. But
it had no handle. The melted piece of ruby was
accordingly brought again, touched to the top of what
was to be the back of the cup, stretched out, and a
stick three or four inches long, resembling a stick of
soft, stretching, bright red candy, clipped off. This,
adhering to the top of the cup, was stretched upward
an inch or two farther, then bent backward, curved
inward, and pressed to the back of the cup near the
bottom. One or two little touches to give it a graceful form, and the handle was finished.
He kept the second cup along in nearly the same
stages of shaping as the first, working on one while
his assistants were reheating the other. The process
of shaping was the same with each. But the process
of plating the second on the inside was much simpler
and easier. The lump of ruby was immersed in
melted flint, coated with it, and then blown.




PLATING AND ANNEALING.           75
"Why don't you do all your plating in that way?"
asked Lawrence.
"We do, unless we wish to produce the effect you
have noticed on the lamp-shades. For that the ruby:must be on the outside. The transparent figures are
cut through it into the clear glass, - as you will see
-when you visit the cutting-room."
The gaffer then presented the two cups to Lawrence, - one for himself, and one for his little cousin
at home.
"But," said he, "they must be annealed before you
can take them."
"What is annealing?"
"Come this way," said the gaffer. "This is the
leer. Look in."
Lawrence looked in through. the wreaths of thin,
undulating flames that poured out of the mouth of
the oven, or flowed away in graceful waves and
curves under the long, low vault within, and saw a
thickly clustered row of glass articles stretching far
away towards an opening where daylight shone at
the opposite end of the leer.
"Here are four leers," said the gaffer, "'two on
each side of this passage. From this end, where the
glass goes in, to the other, where it is taken out, the
distance is eighty feet. The glass is placed on pans,
which are hooked together; so that, when one is
drawn forward at the other end, that draws the whole
string forward. When a pan is emptied at that end,
it is sent back, and hooked on and filled again at this




76         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.




PLATING AND ANNEALING.          77
end.  There is your little inkstand, beginning its
journey in grand company, - fruit-dishes, and ruby
and blue lamp-shades, which look pretty enough
under the rolling flames. I'11 put your ruby cups
near them, and leave directions at the other end with
the man who will take them out: he will bring them
to me."
" How long will it take them to go through?"
" About twenty-four hours. The fire is at this end
of the oven.  As the articles pass through, they
cool very slowly, and come out almost cold at the
other end. In this way we give the particles of glass
time to get acquainted, and to nestle together comfortably and contentedly before they harden. That
makes them fast friends. Your cups and inkstand
would be apt to break the first time you used them
if they were not annealed."
"I see you send nearly everything to the leers,
except the lamp-chimneys," said the Doctor.
"Yes. The thinner the glass the less liable it is
to crack from exposure to heat and cold. The lampchimneys are of such uniform thinness throughout
that we don't consider it necessary to anneal them."
"I advise you to anneal them," said the Doctor.
"I believe we have cracked half a dozen in my house
within a week or two, and we are getting tired of
them. I am quietly reading my newspaper of an
evening, when - snap - another broken chimney."
"That's because you don't buy your chimneys of
us," said the gaffer, laughing.




78         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
VIII
CUTTING AND ORNAMENTING.
WALKING through the passage between the leers,
they entered what is called the " sloar-room," where
the glass was taken from the pans and put into boxes,
to be sent up to the cutting-room.
"You must go up there now," the gaffer said to
Lawrence.  "As it is a separate department from
mine, I will just go up and introduce you to the foreman and leave you. This way; we may as well
ride."
He stepped on what appeared to be a trap-door,.
supported by strong uprights. Lawrence and his
uncle stepped on beside him. A bar was put up, and
they were enclosed in a little square pen. The gaffer
then pulled a lever beside one of the uprights, and
the trap-door, little square pen, passengers and all,
began to ascend towards an opening in the floor overhead; having reached the level of which it stopped,
the bar was let down, and Lawrence and his companions stepped off in the midst of the cutting-room.
This was a long, large room, full of whirling wheels
and the sound of grinding. Overhead, running the
entire length of the building, was a power-shaft,
which, with its many wheels and bands, set in motion
a second range of wheels below, and at these a long
line of workmen and workwomen were grinding
various articles of glass. Over this lower range of




CUTTING AND ORNAMENTING.        79
wheels was a row of queer-looking, tunnel-shaped
wooden tubs, called hoppers, set in a strong framework, and filled with water, or with sand and water,
which dripped upon the wheels.
The Doctor, looking at his watch, and remembering
the business which had brought him to the vicinity
of the glass-house, departed with the gaffer; and
Lawrence was left with the foreman of the cuttingroom.
"But where do you cut the glass?" the boy inquired; for he had expected to see diamonds employed
in the operation.
"What is commonly called glass-cutting," replied
the foreman, - a very obliging elderly person in shirtsleeves and white apron, -" is nothing but grinding
in some shape. Cutting with diamonds is a very
different thing: we don't do anything of that kind
here.
" Regular glass-cutting," he continued, "is done by
three processes. Here is the first."
He showed a man working at a wheel wet with
sand and water dripping from its companion hopper.
The wheel was of iron, and the sand made a sharp,
rough grit upon it. To this the man held with firm
hands the stem of a goblet, very much as a knife is
held to a grindstone. The stem was round as it came
from the hands of the blower, and he was grinding it
into angles.
"You notice," said the foreman, "that the edge of
the wheel is shaped for the kind of work it is doing.




80          AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
We use iron and sand first, because they cut faster
than anything else. But you see how rough' they
leave the surface. Now see the second process. This
wheel is of fine stone, and only water drips on it from
the hopper. This man takes the glass as the other
leaves it, and grinds off the rough surface. But it
still has a dull look, as you see; and that brings us
to the third process. Here the dull surface is polished
on a wooden wheel, with pumice-stone and water.
For the finest work, a cork wheel is used, with what
we call putty, - a paste composed of lead and tin."
"Hallo! " said Lawrence, " this is what I wanted to
see!" as he found a man finishing round facets that
had been cut through the thin colored shell of a ruby
lamp-shade into the transparent glass beneath.
The foreman was now called away, and Lawrence
was left to wander about as he pleased. He watched
for a long time a number of men cutting caster-bottles, wondering at the rapidity with which they turned
them from angle to angle on the stones. He saw one
man fitting glass stoppers to decanters, - a simple
process by which they were made air-tight. The stopper, set fast in a lathe, was set whirling, and ground
down roughly at first with a piece of sheet-iron in
sand and water. It was then inserted in the neck
of the decanter, and ground on that until it fitted.
Three or four workmen were cutting stars in the bottoms of preserve-dishes, while others were simply
taking off the rough spot left by the ponty on the
bottoms of articles that had been blown.




CUTTING AND ORNAMENTING.         81
At one end of the room some women were at work
on transparent lamp-globes, which had come up from
below in a large packing-box. A globe was taken,
attached to a lathe, and set whirling over a trough
half filled with sand and water. In one hand the
workwoman held a stiff wire brush, which she pressed
upon the glass, while she applied to it sand and water,
in profuse quantities, dipped up from the trough with
the other hand. In this way she ground thoroughly
the glass about the two ends of the globe, rendering it
white and opaque, but leaving a broad belt about the
centre untouched. She then stopped the lathe, took
off the globe and rinsed it, showing the polar regions,
so to speak, white with frost, which extended well
down into the temperate zones, while the torrid zone
remained crystal clear. She told Lawrence the process was called "roughing."
He followed the globes from her hands to those of
a workman sitting at a narrow-edged grindstone, on
which he was ornamenting the transparent space between the ground parts. Now he was cutting buds
and petals, now leaves, and now a waving stem surrounding the globe like a tipsy equator, uniting the
whole in a graceful garland of flowers. His cuts on
the glass were not afterwards polished, but were left
white and opaque.
Lawrence asked if he called his work engraving.
"It is a sort of coarse engraving; but we call it
simply cutting," replied the man. "The real engraving is done at the upper end of the room."
4*




82         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
i..
whirling little copper wheel, not more than two
CUTTIN- A LAMP-GLOBE.
Thither Lawrence  went, anfirmly saw  the difference;
yet the engraving, too, was only a species of grinding.
The engraver sat on a high stool before a swtiftly
whirling little copper wheel, not more than two
inches in diameter.'To the edge of this he touched
occasionally a mixture of oil and emery, in a little
shallow dish then pressed firmly upon it the article
he was engaving.




CUTTING AND ORNAMENTING.          83
He was ornamenting the sides of goblets and wineglasses. On one he was cutting an initial letter, encircled by a delicate wreath. Lawrence asked if he
had a pattern to go by.
"I make my own patterns, and carry them in my
head mostly," replied the artist. "For this design, I
just make four marks for the top and bottom of the
letter. The wreath I do without making any marks
first."
As the side he was engraving was necessarily held
from him, and he could see where he was cutting only
by looking through the glass from the other side, Lawrence wondered how he could do such fine work. The
artist, seeing him interested, showed him still finer
specimens. One was a fairy-like goblet, the surface
of which was surrounded and filled up by the gracefully bending sprigs and drooping flowers of the
fuchsia. Another was a landscape, showing a hunter
and his dog in natural attitudes, and a partridge rising on the wing before the uplifted gun; and there
were many more equally beautiful.
" Is it possible you do all this with a wheel?"
"I use a variety of wheels. Each has an edge
shaped for the kind of work it does. Here is the
smallest." It was scarcely bigger than a pin-head.
"-I'11 show you a design -this is it- that required
nine different wheels in the cutting."
"But you must understand drawing?"
"0 -Oyes. When I began as an apprentice, thirteen
years ago, I was set to work at first on broken glass,




84         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.making dots and lines, like a school-boy learning to
write. Then I made them on whole glass which we
were not very particular about. At the same time I
gave my evenings to the study of drawing. I worked
hard; but a man can't accomplish much in this world
unless he does apply himself."
" Is it the copper wheel that cuts the glass?"
" No; it is the emery we put on the wheel."
"Do you work nights? "
" Not often. But sometimes, when we have orders
we are in a hurry to get done, I take a little work
home with me in the evening."
" How do you do it at home? Your lathes here go
by steam-power, don't they?"
" Yes; but I have a foot-lathe at home T can do my
work on, though it is harder. In some of the English
factories glass-engravers use foot-lathes altogether.
Labor is cheap there."
"With the exception of this ornamental work,
what is the great difference between cut glass and
common glass? I see they go to work and grind
down the round stems and sides of blown goblets into
just such shapes as they press other glass in."
"In the first place, blown glass is freer from waves
and wrinkles; and the angles on cut glass are much
sharper and cleaner than on pressed glass.  Although," added the engraver, admiring the perfection
of a pressed goblet, "they are getting to do some of
their pressed work so well, that, with a little subsequent burnishing, it almost equals the cut. It is




COLORING AND. SILVERING.        85
not so apt to crack as the cut glass is, besides being
so much cheaper. You may usually know pressed
glass by this little seam on each side, left by the
crease in the iroulds; though from some articles it is
burnished off."
IX.
COLORING AND SILVERING.
FROM the cutting-room Lawrence found his way to
the lamp-room, where he saw a number of girls at
work cementing the bodies and feet of lamps together,
and putting on the brass collars. Farther on he
found men screwing the lamp-tops on, and fitting the
metallic tops of other ware, such as pepper-boxes,
" mustards," and sirup-pitchers; thence he went on to
the mould-room, where the patterns were made and
the moulds finished after they were brought from the
foundry.
He finally inquired his way to the private room of
the gaffer, whom he found sitting at a work-bench,
watching what looked like a strip of copper or brass
doubled up in a transparent bottle half filled with water.
"What are you doing to that old hoop?" asked
Lawrence.
"That old hoop," said the gaffer, "is pure gold,
enough to buy you a small farm. I am eating it up."
"Eating it up?" said Lawrence, laughing.  "I
don't see it."




86         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
"Eating it up with that preparation of nitric acid.
Do you see it work?"
Lawrence did see, to his surprise, that the liquid
was beginning to bubble about it, like some brisk
sort of wine, and that the old hoop was gradually
sinking down into it.
"It looks," he said, "as if the gold was on fire, and
sending up fine vaporous flames through the liquor.
But is n't it a poor use to put gold to? especially at
the present premium."
"We use gold in coloring ruby glass; that is what
makes ruby glass so expensive. We use old bones,
or the phosphate of lime, as I told you, to make
white glass, and the oxides of iron, copper, and silver
to make other colors. The yellowish tint, with shades
of green and opal, which you may have seen in
Bohemian glass, is produced chiefly by uranium."
" What is stained glass, such as we read of in descriptions of old cathedral windows? "
"Staining is a kind of painting on glass. The
colors are a mineral composition; and they are melted
into the glass, so that nothing will ever fade them or
wash them out. Fancy articles of glass are often
painted in the same way."
"How is this silver glass made?" asked Lawrence,
taking up a door-knob from the bench. "It looks
like silver, and it always keeps bright. I have seen
pitchers and sugar-bowls and lamp-reflectors made
of it."
"That is a new process, but quite simple. I'11 tell




COLORING AND SILVERING.          87
you how we make a reflector, for instance. The glass
is blown into a large babble, which is worked flat
across the top, and saucer-shaped at the bottom.
Then the blower puts his mouth to the pipe, but,
instead of blowing, he sucks, and draws the top in
until it almost touches the bottom. Then you have
something like a broad, shallow dish with a lining.
Here are half a dozen of them. The hole in the
bottom part is caused by the cracking off of the pipe
after it is blown. You see there is a narrow space
between the bottom part and the lining. Now I'll
show you how the silvering is done."
The gaffer took a tall measuring-glass, and went
into another room, where there were some jars of
transparent liquid on a shelf:
"This jar," said he, "contains nitrate of silver";
and he poured a small quantity into the glass. Then
he went to another jar. " This is a solution of grape
sugar,- nothing more nor less"; and he poured in a
still larger quantity of that. He then went to a
third jar. "This is pure water"; and he filled the
glass with it.
He then turned the reflectors down dn a counter,
and filled the space between the bottom part and the
lining of each by pouring the mixed contents of the
glass in through the hole. When they were full, he
took them to an oven, and placed them on a pan of
hot sand.
" That is all," said he, shutting the oven. "In half
an hour I come again and take them, pour out the




88         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
liquid, and find that the silver in it has completely
coated the inside of the glass. Pitchers and goblets
are made in the same way, except that the lining, instead of being sucked in by the blower, is pushed in
with a plug. After silvering, the stem and foot of the
goblet are put on, and the hole in the bottom of the
pitcher is closed up."
"Now I know," said Lawrence, "how those fancy
glasses are made that seem to be nearly full of wine,
but, when you go to drink, it turns out to be only a
little wine, or some other colored liquid, under the
lining. You can fool a fellow by making believe you
are going to throw it in his face. Do you make window-glass here?"
"0  no; blowing window-glass is another business
entirely."
x.
WINDOW-GLASS AND PLATE-GLASS.
"WHAT! is window-glass blown?"
".Certainly. What is called-English crown glass
is made in this way. It is first blown into a large
globe, then flattened and reversed on a ponty. Where
the glass breaks off from the pipe, a hole is left. That
side is then made melting hot before the furnace; it
is whirled so swiftly that the centrifugal force given
to it enlarges the hole, gradually at first, then faster




WINDOW-GLASS AND PLATE-GLASS.         89
and faster, then — flap! that whole side flies open,
and what was a globe is a disk, or wheel, four or five
feet in diameter. It is called a table. After annealing, it is cut up into panes.
"The're is another process," continued the gaffer,
"by which our common window-glass is made. By
the way, if ever you visit Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania,
you must go into the window-glass factories there;
you will find them very curious. Their furnace, in
the first place, is built in the ancient style: it has no
chimney, and the smoke from the bituminous coal
they burn pours out in a cloud into the room. There
are openings in the roof for it to escape through, and
a continual draught of air from the doors carries it
upward, so that it is not so bad for the workmen as
one would think. Besides, they do not begin to blow
until the smoke is all burnt off.
"There are five pots on each side of the furnace;
and you will see five men in a row, blowing all at
once, with the regularity of a file of soldiers exercising. Each gathers thirty or forty pounds of metal on
his pipe, which is very long and strong. They stand
on platforms, to get room to swing the glass, as they
blow it. The five men begin to blow and swing all
together. Each blows a great globe of glass, which
is stretched out gradually by the swinging motion into a cylinder, or roller, as it is called, five feet long.
Then the five rollers are swung up towards the furnace-holes, and five other soldiers spring forward with
their guns, — which in this case are iron bars, that




90         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
they set upright under the five blowing-pipes to support them while the rollers are reheating in the
necks of the pots. The blowers blow in the pipes
with all their might, then clap their thumbs over the
holes to prevent the air from rushing out again; in
the mean while the end of the roller is softened, so
that at last the air, forced in and expanded by the
heat, bursts it outwards. The glass is then a cylinder,
open at one end. It is whirled in the heat until the
edges become true, then brought ayway, - the five iron
supports dropping to the ground with a simultaneous
clang. The cylinders are laid on tables, where the
imperfect spherical end about the blowing-pipe is
cracked off from the rest by a stripe of melted glass
drawn around it. The cylinder is then cracked from
end to end on one side by means of a red-hot iron
passed through it.
" In an adjoining building is what is called the flattening oven. The cylinders brought there are lifted
on the end of a lever, passed in through. a circular
opening just large enough to admit them, and laid on
flattening stones on the oven bottom, with the crack
uppermost. The oven bottom is circular, and it revolves horizontally. As the glass softens, it separates
at the crack,,and lays itself down gently and gradually on the stone. The long cylinder is then a flat
sheet, three feet wide and nearly five feet in length.
There are four openings around the sides of the oven;
at one the glass is put in, through another a workman
sweeps the stone for it, a third workman smooths it




WINDOW-GLASS AND PLATE-GLASS.        91
down with a block as it comes round to him, and a
fourth, at the last opening, which is close to the one
at which it was put in, lifts the sheet - partly cooled
by this time - upon a carriage in the oven. This he
does by means of a lever furnished with sharp, broad
blades at the end, which he works in under the glass.
When the carriage is full, it is run through an annealing oven beyond.
"The opposite end of the annealing oven opens
into the  cutting-room.  There the carriages are
pushed along a central track, and unloaded at the
stalls of the cutters. The cutter has a table before
him, with measure-marks on its edges. He lifts one
of the sheets,-lays it on the table, and rules it faster
than a school-boy rules his slate.  His ruler is a
wooden rod five feet long, and his pencil-point is a
diamond. Every stroke is a cut. Not that he cuts
the glass quite apart; indeed, he seems scarcely to
make a scratch. Yet that scratch has the effect of
cracking the glass quite through, so that it breaks
clean off at the slightest pressure. In this way the
sheets are cut up into panes of the requisite size."
"I should think the diamonds would wear out,"
said Lawrence.
"I remember," replied the gaffer, "one workman
told me that a single diamond would last him two or
three years. It has fifteen or sixteen different edges,
and when one edge is worn out, he uses another.
South American diamonds, such as he used, cost, he
told me, from six to thirty dollars each; and, when




92         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
they are worn out for his purpose, he sells them for
jewels to be put into watches."
"What is plate-glass?" Lawrence asked.
"That is not blown, but cast. The pot, or cistern,
containing the melted metal, is swung up by a crane
over an immense polished metallic table, and tipped.
The table is heated, and there is a rim to keep the
glass which is poured on from running over the sides.
The glass is then rolled down to a uniform thickness
by a heavy copper cylinder, reaching across the table,
and resting on the rim, which is just as high as the
plate is to be thick. For bow-windows the plates
are bent before cutting up into panes.
"For mirrors they are silvered in this way: -A
sheet of tin-foil is spread on a table, andia thin coating
of mercury is poured over it. Then the glass to be silvered - sometimes an immense plate, and it has been
carefully annealed, ground, and polished, of courseis slipped on in such a way as to exclude all the air
from beneath it, the table being tipped just enough to
let the superfluous mercury run off. When the plate
is in its place on the table, it is kept for several hours
under a press of heavy weights. The mercury and
tin-foil combine to form what is called the amalgam,
which coats the glass and makes the mirror."




OTHER CURIOUS MATTERS.           93
XT.
OTHER CURIOUS MATTERS.
LAWRENCE said he had read that glass mirrors were
modern, and that the ancients used polished metal
instead. " The Romans for window-panes used sheets
of mica. Yet glass-making," said he, "was a very
ancient art."
" So ancient," said the Doctor, coming in just then,
" that in Egypt glass ornaments have been discovered
on mummies that were buried three thousand years
ago; and on their monuments are still to be seen
hieroglyphics, or picture writings, which represent
glass-blowers at work in the same way, and with the
same kinds of tools, as modern glass-blowers. The inhabitants of Tyre were famous glass-makers, after
them the Romans, and after them the Venetians. It
was the Venetians that introduced the art to modern
Europe."
" The Germans brought it to this country," said the
gaffer.  "A company of them  started a factory at
Quincy, in Massachusetts, before the Revolution, but
it didn't succeed. Mr. Hewes, a Boston merchant,
next tried it. His glass-blowers were nearly all Hessians, deserters from the British army. He set up
his works in the woods of New Hampshire, where fuel
was cheap. But it was n't till after the beginning of
the present century that glass-making began to prosper in this country. It has now become a very ex



94         AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
tensive and very profitable business. New England
manufactures a good share of the flint-glass which is
made in America, and which I may say, without
boasting, is equal to any in the world. Our windowglass is made mostly in New Jersey, New York, and
Pennsylvania.  It does n't pay to manufacture that
except where- fuel is cheap."
" Is n't it wonderful? " said Lawrence, taking up a
goblet. "In that piece of glass are white sand, and
red-lead, and pearlash, and saltpetre, neither of -them
transparent by itself, and yet here they are all transparent-! It does seem a sort of magic that has made
them invisible!"
"There are many wonderful things connected with
glass," said the gaffer. "It will not tarnish. Only
one acid has any.effect upon it. It is one of the most
brittle substances, and yet one of the most elastic. A
hollow glass ball can be made that will rebound half
the distance to your hand if you drop it on an anvil."
Lawrence said he should like such a ball as that;
but when told that it was pretty sure to break at the
second or third rebound, he said " Oh!" and cheerfully gave it up.
"It makes the finest sounding bells," said the Doctor, "and musical glasses are made of it that are
played by merely rubbing them with the moist fingers. It will condense moisture from the air more
quickly than any of the metals."
"There is another curious thing," said the gaffer.
",Drop a ball of melted glass in water, and you'd think




OTHER CURIOUS MATTERS.          95
it would make a tremendous spluttering; but it don't
at first. After it has had time to cool a little, then it
sets the water to bubbling."
They had now returned to the gaffer's room, which
they found so full of the fumes of the acid that Lawrence immediately began to cough.
"You see," said the gaffer, "the gold. has disappeared. The acid has eaten it. Come with me now,
and I'11 show you something that happened while
you were in the cutting-room."
Locking the door behind him, he took his visitors
once more to the cave, which they found full of
smoke and steam and stifling heat. There he showed
them the astonishing spectacle of what seemed a cluster of icicles, some a yard in length, hanging from the
grate under the big furnace.
" One of our melting-pots burst. It was nearly full
of metal, which ran down into the fire. Some of it
came through the grate, but the most of it rushed out
through the teaze-hole in a perfect lava flood, which
came near setting us on fire."
"That must have been a serious loss," said Lawrence.
"Yes. To say nothing of the pot, the glass in it
was worth about a hundred and fifty dollars."
"Well," said the Doctor, "we began with the cave,
and we may as well end with it."  And, taking leave
of the gaffer, he departed with his nephew, who, he
promised, should come in a few days for the inkstand
and cups.




96          AMONG THE GLASS-MAKERS.
" How wonderful it all is! " said Lawrence, as they
stood on the platform, waiting for the train.
" It is truly wonderful," replied the Doctor. "When
we consider the many uses to which glass is applied,
its cheapness, its purity, its beauty, we find that it
possesses the valuable qualities of nearly all the
metals;- incorruptible as gold, clear as silver, useful
as iron, what would our houses be without it? It
keeps the cold out, it lets the light in. We drink
out of it, and we see ourselves in it. Besides fulfilling a thousand common and domestic uses, it is made
into gems that rival the brilliancy of the diamond,
and into lenses which give new realms to human
vision. It restores eyesight to the aged, and remedies
the defective eyesight of the young.  It magnifies
objects invisible to the naked eye, so that they can
be distinctly seen and studied; and it brings the
heavens near. To it we owe our intimate acquaintance with the stars. The telescope is the father of
modern astronomy, and the soul of the telescope is
glass."




A JOURNEY TO THE COAL REGION.      97
CHAPTER IV.
AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
I.
A JOURNEY TO THE COAL REGION.
~- -—..__ t.  A'HAT are you think~ By   eing, Lawrence?"
~l; ii said the Doctor, as
the  family  were
~  seated one evening. ] round the library
efire.:~   October had come,
the nights were
-   growing cold, and a
bright glow  from
the grate gave a
warm and cheerful
_   i~PIBIC~eIM     aspect to the room.'`~~ei kVO -'            The. Doctor had, been reading the
arm, evening  paper;
Mrs. Dean was knitting a white worsted tippet, - so
very white and soft that anybody would have known
it was intended for Lawrence's little cousin Ethel,
for where- was there another little throat or chin it
5                       Q




98          AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
would become so well? Ethel was rocking pussy to
sleep in her doll's cradle, - only pussy was n't very
sleepy, and the sight of the white tippet was a constant temptation to her playful paws.
As for Lawrence, he was gazing abstractedly at the
fire, - scarcely moving, except when, every minute
or two, he took a lump of coal from the hod, and
dropped it carefully into the grate, and never once
speaking, for I don't know how long, until his uncle
startled him with his sudden question.
" Oh! I? I was thinking how curious it is. I
mean the fire. And the coal that makes the fire,cwhere it comes from, and how we happen to be burning it here. Ever since we saw the great furnaces at
the glass-works, I can't keep it out of my head."
"No!" cried little Ethel; "he won't even look at
my kitty, - and she is so interesting in her nightcap
and nightgown! Only see how quiet she is! There!
rock-a-by, baby, upon the tree-top! When the wind
blows, the cradle will —  Dear me, kitty!" she exclaimed; for there was just then an exciting movement of the white tippet, and away went kitty,
nightcap, nightgown, and all, to have a snatch at it.
There was a good laugh at the funny appearance
pussy made, dressed up so, with the nightcap-strings
tied under her whiskers, and her paws in sleeves.
And Mrs. Dean said, "You see, Ethel, cats will be
cats, and boys will be boys. You must n't blame
them because they won't do always just as you would
like to have them. Lawrence is a good deal more




A JOURNEY TO THE COAL REGION.      99
interested in coal, just now, than he is in cats with
nightcaps."
"For a while it was all glass," said Ethel, putting
pussy back into the cradle. "There was n't a glass
thing in the house that he did n't talk about, and tell
us how it was made."
"Yes, and did n't you like to have me?" said
Lawrence. "You made me tell you over and over
again how your little ruby cup was made."
"Yes, indeed; for that is very pretty, with my
initials engraved on it, and the little flower-wreath
around them to match yours. But coal,- ugly black
coal! -I don't see what there is interesting in that! "
"Lawrence does, and I am very glad of it," said
the Doctor. "How would you like to see where the
coal comes from, - eh, Lawrence?"
"That's what I've been wishing for!" exclaimed
the boy. "If I could only go into a coal-mine!"
The good Doctor smiled. "Well, now, I'll tell
you what I have been thinking. Some gentlemen of
my acquaintance talk of purchasing coal lands in
Pennsylvania; and they have their eye on some near
Scranton, in Luzerne County, - which you will find,
when you turn to your map, about the centre of the
northeastern quarter of the State. They have asked
me to go out and look at this property for them, and
I think of starting next week. Would you like to
go with me?"
Lawrence fairly leaped out of his chair with delight. "Would I? 0 uncle!"




100         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
"There she goes again!" said Ethel, with a rueful
face, holding pussy's nightgown in her hand, having
pulled it off in a vain attempt to detain the runaway.
"Why could n't you keep still, coz, when she was
just getting so quiet? "
"Why, I'm going to Pennsylvania!" cried Lawrence, - as if that were excuse enough for the wildest
conduct.
"Yes, but you need n't dance up and down that
way, if you are! Now she won't go to sleep tonight!"
"Neither will Lawrence, I'm afraid," said his aunt.
"' He should n't have been told of anything so exciting
until morning."
The Doctor laughed, and said, "I knew he would
have to lie awake one night, thinking of it, and that
may as well be to-night."
Lawrence seemed to be of the same opinion. He
went to bed as usual; but he did n't want to sleep.
-He lay awake, thinking of the promised journey, and
of coal mines and miners, for an hour or two. He was
so excited, that when he fell asleep at last he dreamed
that he was a locomotive in nightcap and nightgown,
and that, taking fright at the sound of a gun, he ran
off the track, and smashed up a long passenger train.
Then it seemed to him that the noise he had taken
for a gun was in fact the explosion of his own boiler;
then, that he was the engineer, and that he was
knocked- very..high by repeated explosions, which
wouldn't let him come. down. ou-t. of the freezing




A JOURNEY TO THE COAL REGION.    101
Weather. He awoke, in the midst of his- trouble, to
find that he had thrown off the bedclothes, that he
was shivering with the cold, and that a window-blind
was slamming.
The days seemed very long to the boy, until at last
the time came for bidding his aunt and cousin good
by, and starting with his uncle on their journey.
They took the steamboat train for New York; and
Lawrence, after sleeping soundly "as a top," as he
said, " on that pantry-shelf," - meaning the berth in
the state-room,- awoke the next morning in the
great city.
He had a few hours to look about him, while his
uncle transacted some business; then they crossed
the river in a ferry-boat, (how keenly the boy enjoyed
all that!) and, taking a train on the other side, rattled
away, across New Jersey, and far up into Pennsylvania, reaching Scranton the same evening.
It was, of course, a delightful journey to the boy,
and he was almost sorry when it came to an end. Yet
the end was the most interesting part of it. The
train went winding in among the mountains that
enclose the Lackawanna Valley; they were covered
with wild forests, still bright with the glorious tints
of October; and, through a deep ravine that divided
them, a beautiful stream - rightly named " Roaring
Brook " -came rushing down. On the other side
from this, — that is, on the right, - Little Roaring
Brook came leaping from the rocks in white cascades,




102         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
and, disappearing for a moment under the railroad
bridge, fell into the larger stream below. Then Lawrence had exciting glimpses of steaming colliery
buildings, with their black mounds - almost mountains - of waste coal and slate from the mines, pushing out into the narrow valley. Then the train passed
within sight of immense iron mills and blast furnaces
flashing and flaming in the early twilight; then it
came to a stop; and an omnibus whirled them away
to a hotel in the city.
It was too late to see much of Scranton that night;
but Lawrence consoled himself with anticipations of
pleasure in going about with his uncle the next morning. He was, however, destined to be disappointed.
A tall gentleman, in gray overcoat and gray whiskers, whom he left talking with his uncle in the
reading-room, was still at the hotel the next morning.
After breakfast, a buggy came to the door of the hotel,
-.for himself and his uncle, Lawrence supposed;
but no, it was for the tall gentleman; and the Doctor
was going to ride with him.
"I've an engagement with this man," said the Doctor, taking his nephew aside; " and I see his buggy.as seats for only two. But you won't mind being
left alone for a few hours."
" 0, certainly not," said Lawrence, with as cheerful
aface as he could assume, though with a swelling
heart. And his uncle rode away.
He watched the buggy as it disappeared up the
long street; then a strange feeling of desolation came




A JOURNEY TO THE COAL REGION.    103
over him. The town was full of things worth seeing,
but how could he, an utter stranger, hope to find them
out? If he could only have gone in the buggy!
It was not his way, however, to spend much time
in lamenting things that could not be helped. The
morning was fine. The sunlight was beautiful on the
mountains. " There's no use feeling bad," thought he.
"I'm lucky to be here, any way. I can see the river
and the city, if nothing else."
So he went out, in good spirits, and. spent the forenoon very happily. Yet he was n't quite satisfied
with himself when he returned to the hotel at dinnertime. He had seen and enjoyed many things, but not
what he most wished to see, - the interior of a coalmine. He had stood in silent wonder before more
than one great colliery build: h;, and heard the thundering crash of the coal dumped into the breakers;
he had even looked into one, and seen the loaded cars
from the deep mines whirled up swiftly, by the
powerful engines, out of the black pit, and whirled
back again empty, with terrible rapidity, and he had
asked himself if he would ever have the courage to
go down in one of them. He thought he would, if
any one familiar with the mines would go with him;
but everybody he saw appeared too busy to give a lad
like him the least attention. " I must make acquaintances," thought he; and he determined to begin at
the dinner-table, - his uncle not having returned.
At dinner, however, he was quite disheartened by
what he saw. Sixteen young men sat at the same




104         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
table with himself, and scarcely sixteen words were
spoken by all of them during the solemn ceremony of
eating. They were all good-looking, and had clean
dickies, and white foreheads, and appeared so intelligent, and so much at their ease, that their unsocial
behavior quite astonished him. Indeed, it overcame
him so, that he would no more have ventured to
break the awful silence by speaking loud than if he
had been sitting in his uncle's church-pew during
sermon-time.
II.
MR. CLARENCE AND HIS DOG MUFF.
WHILE he was wondering what they could all be
thinking about, another young man entered, - a very
young man, I may say, for his age could scarcely
have exceeded that of Lawrence himself, although
his surprisingly cool and self-possessed manners
made him appear much older. He had a pleasant
face, a jaunty short jacket, and large side-pockets.
In these he carried his hands, and, in one of them,
the end of a cane, which stuck up behind him at
about the angle of a plough-handle.  He looked
around with a knowing expression, and finally,
seeming, after mature thought on the subject, to have
selected Lawrence as a table-companion, went and sat
down opposite him.
"Here, Muff!" said he; and Lawrence noticed that
he was followed by a very small dog, in a very large




MR. CLARENCE AND MS DOG- MUFF.    105
fleece of white curls, that made him look as if Nature
had at first designed him for a dog, but had afterwards
changed her mind, and finished him up as a sheep.
The young man took the cane from his pocket,
held it up directly over the animal's upturned nose,
and dropped it.  Click!- the animal's jaws flew
open like a trap, and caught it.
"Turn three times!" said the young man.
The animal immediately got up on his hind legs,
with his head thrown back, balancing the stick, and
began to revolve, like a capstan with a lever thrust
through it.
" Go! " said the young man; and the dog, dropping
down on all fours, still holding the cane, retired with
it to the door of the dining-room, where he laid it
down under the hat-table, and put his paws on it, and
kept vigilant guard over it, against all comers. The
tall head-waiter made one or two attempts to turn
him out, but got growled and snapped at so smartly
that he finally let him remain.
Everybody appeared to be amused by this trifling
incident, especially some children at a table near by,
who could not laugh enough to see the tall waiter
retreat from such a tangled little ball of wool. Even
the solemn young men relaxed their grave countenances, and from that moment became sociable.
Meanwhile, the dog's youthful master, not appearing in the least aware that either he or his pet had
done anything extraordinary, glanced over the bill of
fare, with the air of a person making judicious selec5*




106         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
tions. Then he gave his order, calling the young lady
who waited on him "Sis," and talking to her very
much as if he had been an old friend of her father's
and held her on his knee when she was little. Then,
resting his arms on the table, he looked across it at
Lawrence, and gave a short nod.
Lawrence gave a short nod in return.
" Fine day," said the young fellow.
"Beautiful," replied Lawrence, adding, "That's a
splendid pup of yours," - though he knew that
splendid was n't just the word.
"He'll do," said the young fellow, with a glance
at the door. "'No dogs allowed in the dining-hall,'
says the chap in the white apron, as I came in.'Is
that the rule of this hotel?' says I.'Yes, sir,' says
he.'And a very good rule it is,' says I;'but it
don't say anything about sheep'; and, while we were
talking, Muff and I walked in. I'd like to see the
place where Muff and I can't go!- Thank you, sis,"
to the young lady bringing his dinner. — "Acquainted in Scranton?"
Lawrence said no, -he arrived in town only the
evening before with his uncle.
" Indeed! I came with my uncle, Mr. Fitz Adam,
the celebrated mining engineer. You've heard of
him, of course?"
Lawrence was forced to own that he had not heard
of the celebrated Mr. Fitz Adam. Thereupon the
young fellow laid down his knife and fork, and looked
at him over his plate with mild astonishment, making




MR. CLARENCE AND HIS DOG MUFF.    107
Lawrence painfully aware how much he had lowered
himself in his (the young fellow's) esteem by that
confession.
"May I ask where you came from, sir?" he said,
- as if. that must be a curious country, indeed, where
the in-habitants had never heard of his uncle.
Lawrence, hardly knew at first what to make of
this impertinence, but wisely concluded to make a
joke of. it.
"I am from Massachusetts," said he, with a droll
sinile just puckering the corners of his mouth. "And
my uncle is the distinguished Doctor Dean. You
have heard of him, of course?"
The young fellow laughed, and nodded at Lawrence
approvingly; and Lawrence felt that this reply had
raised him again in the young gentleman's esteem.
"We are even on that. — Butter, if you please, sis.
Thank you, sis. And see here, sis!- can't you get
me a piping-hot sweet potato? I'll remember you
in my will, if you'll be so kind as to oblige me."
Then, turning again to Lawrence: "We're bound to
speak well of our uncles, I see, though mine served
me a remarkably shabby trick this morning."
"How so?"
"He left me asleep in my bed, and, as near as I
can find out, went off to ride with another gentleman."
"Exactly what my uncle did by me! " said Lawrence, " only I was n't asleep in bed. Is your uncle
a tall man in gray overcoat and gray whiskers? "




108         AMONG THE COAL-MIE!$M.
"The very same! You don't say he and your
uncle- well! this is a coincidence! Your hand on
it!"  And the young fellow stretched his arm across
the table. " My name," said he, "is Mr. Clarence Fitz
Adam."
"Mine is Lawrence Livingstone."  And from that
moment they were friends.
"I wish you had been with me this morning," said
Mr. Clarence, wiping his elbow, — for he had dipped
it into the gravy when they shook hands. "I have
seen Scranton outside, inside, and" - he pointed
downward, mysteriously - " underside."
"Not in the coal-mines? " said Lawrence, with a
pang of envy. "I wanted to go down in a shaft, but
did n't know how the thing was to be done."
" You ain't bashful, I hope? You'll find bashfulness don't pay, if you are going through the world,"
said Mr. Clarence, with an air of old experience.
"The world's a big shop.'No admittance,' says the
chap at the door.'0, excuse me!' you say, and
back out. But what do I say'No admittance?
Certainly, that's all right, - an excellent regulation;
but, if you please, sir,'- then I go on and ask questions, and the first thing he knows, he is showing me
round. Come, I'11 get my pup fed, then we'll take a
stroll together."




SCRANTON AND -COAL.           109
III.
SCRANTON AND COAL.
LAWRENCE was well pleased, for he was certain Mr.
Clarence must be a capital fellow to go about with.
They walked down the street arm in arm, and
crossed the river on the railroad bridge.
" This is the famous Lackawanna, as I suppose you
have learned," said Mr. Clarence, pointing downwards
at the hurrying water. "It is the stream that gives
its name to all this coal region about Scranton. This
side of the river," he continued, when they had
crossed, "is Hyde Park. It is the fifth ward of the
city. Let's climb the bank above the railroad, and
get a view. These," said he, turning, when they had
reached a favorable point, — " these plain-looking little
houses right before us here are miners' houses."
" I don't see but that they look very much like the
houses of any other class of laborers," said Lawrence;
"and I had imagined, somehow, they must be different,- little, low, black, dismal, mysterious huts, to
correspond with the miners' dismal occupation, you
know."
"They may be so in some countries. But in this
favored land of liberty," said Mr. Clarence, smiling
at his own eloquence, "the miners are so well paid,
that they can afford to live very comfortably, as you
see.
"Well," he went on, pointing with his cane, "there




110         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
/g ___                  __,
_
MINERS' HOUSES, AND VIEW OF SCRANTON.
are the banks of the Lackawanna, and the railroad
bridge we came over. We are here on the west bank;
and there is the maifi part of the city on the east or
left bank. This is all Scranton, - a fine, large city,
as you see. But it has all been built up within a
few years. A few years ago, this country was all a
wilderness. Do you know what has made the differ



SCRANTON AND COAL.           111
ence? Coal, anthracite coal," Mr. Clarence continued,
answering his own question. "Coal built those fine
brick blocks, those churches, hotels, stores. Coal built
those big blast furnaces and iron mills. Coal built
the railroads you and I came in on yesterday. Coal
has done all this, and more," - adding, by way of
climax, "it has brought me the pleasure of your
acquaintance."
"This is a funny-looking brick church, up on the
hill behind us," said Lawrence, " with the end cracked
open, and the sides held up with props."
"Yes. And just beyond it you'll see a house
tipped up on one end, great pits in the earth, and
other irregularities. Can you guess how they came
about? Coal is to blame here too. There are mines
all under where we stand. They extend like so many
streets beneath the streets of the town, - two or
three hundred feet below, of course. In place of
houses and blocks down there, as you'll see, for we
are going into a mine presently, they have what
they call pillars, - pillars of coal, — which they leave
to support the country above, when they are undermining it. That is a very important consideration,
where a city stands. But it seems they did n't leave
quite support enough under this part; for one day
the ground began to shake and tremble; and it shook
and trembled every little while, all that day and
night, and all the next day, and the great pillars down
there groaned and complained; and now and then the
coal would fly off from them, as if it was angry, and




112          AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
the props - for they put wooden props under the roof
besides -broke like pipe-stems; and finally, the
next night, the crash came. The pillars had finally
given way, and the country had settled. It looks
now as if a young earthquake had kicked it."
" Who pays the damages under such circumstances?"
"I believe that question has n't been decided yet.
The owner of the land sells house-lots, reserving the
right to mine the coal under them. He sells the right
to the coal companies. Coal companies take out too
much coal, - crash, - down go the house-lots, with
the houses on them. Who is to blame? You see, it
is a delicate legal point," added Mr. Clarence, in his
fine way. "And now, what do you say to going down
and taking a look at that underground country?"
"I should be delighted to!" said Lawrence.
" Well, come along, I've been here before, you see.
Come, Muff!"
On their way they passed a little white box of a
house, which Mr. Clarence said was the superintendent's office, and proposed that they should look in.
The interior consisted of one room, divided bt a
counter, on one side of which sat a young man reading a newspaper. Lawrence and Mr. Clarence, with
the little dog Muff, advanced from the other side.
"Here," said Mr. Clarence, "is where the miners
walk up and get their pay." He rapped on the counter with his cane. " How are you, Mr. Superintendent?"




SCiANTON AND COAL.           113
The young man looked up pleasantly enough; and
Mr. Clarence proceeded to introduce himself and his
companion, with liberal allusions to their distinguished
uncles, which made the more modest Lawrence grin
and blush.
"We shall take it as a favor if you will grant
us facilities for visiting the mines," said the fluenttongued Mr. Clarence." It won't be safe for you to go into the mines without a guide, and I have no person to send with you,"
replied the superintendent, politely, but decidedly.
Upon which Lawrence was for retiring at once.
But Mr. Clarence said, leaning upon the counter very
much at his ease, " Of course; I understand all about
that; and we have no wish to take up your valuable
time. Thank you, - very kind, I am sure," - though
Lawrence could n't see how the superintendent had
shown himself so very kind, or why they should thank
him. " Perhaps, however," said Mr. Clarence, "as my
friend here is interested in the coal formation, you
might show us some specimens without much trouble
to yourself."
" 0, certainly." The superintendent laid aside his
newspaper, and got up from his chair. "Here is
something quite pretty," said he, opening a drawer
and placing on the counter a piece of slate-rock, bearing a beautiful impression of a fern-leaf. Lawrence's
enthusiasm over it seemed to please him; and he
continued to lay out his treasures, until he came to
one which he pronounced "very remarkable."
H




114         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
This was a broad, thin slab of slate, which proved
to be a perfect cast of a portion of the leaves of a
strange tree, which must have been two or three feetin diameter, at least. All the minute seams in the
bark, together with little bud-like spots occurring at
regular intervals between parallel lines half an inch
apart, were stamped with wonderful delicacy and distinctness in the slaty mould.
" How   where did these come from? " cried Lawrence, examining the specimens with astonishment
and admiration.
"The coal, you know," said the voluble Mr. Clarence, " is supposed to be the result of immense, rank
growths of fern-trees, and other plants, which absorbed the surplus carbon of the atmosphere during
the carboniferous period. Carbon, you know, is the
principal thing in coal, —the French say charbon,
which means both carbon and coal, — and the carboniferous era is that in which our coal deposits were
made. That was nobody knows how many thousands
of years ago, -millions, it. may be; and the trunks
and leaves that made these impressions in the stones
you are handling grew and decayed long before ever
man appeared on-the globe."
Lawrence knew as much as that before; but now,
with the impressions before his eyes, distinct as if
they had been taken but yesterday, the fact came
home to his mind with startling force.
"Those forests," continued Mr. Clarence, "must
have grown mostly in the water, and have sunk down




SCRANTON AND COAL.            115
in great beds of fallen trunks and matted leaves, and
there decayed; and occasionally layers of mud or
clay must have washed in over them; and now and
then, at longer intervals, — the ground sinking, I suppose, - great beds of sand and pebbles washed in.
The vegetable matters changed to coal, while the mud
hardened into slate, and the sand and pebbles into
rocks.  The mud would often take impressions of
the leaves and bark, and retain them, as it hardened, even after the leaves and bark themselves had
changed to coal."
" See what you make of these," said the superintendent, smiling, as he handed out more specimens.
"These are fossil roots," said Mr. Clarence. "You
find them generally in the fire clay under the coal
veins; don't you? Ah, this," he said, seizing a beautiful slender, jointed stem of stone, - "this is a fossil
reed! Something like it grows in Mexico, at this day."
"I believe you are right," said the superintendent.
" That was fifteen feet long, when we first found it.
But it has been broken, and I have given away
pieces of it."
"Oh! if I could only have a piece!" exclaimed
Lawrence.
"I'll give you a piece," said the superintendent,
and picked out from the pile a small fragment of the
reed, which had been previously broken off. Then,
seeing how delighted the boy was, he selected a piece
of slate that had a fine imprint of a leaf on it, and
gave it to him.




116         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
Lawrence, having secured these treasures, threw
longing glances at the large cast already described.
But of course the superintendent could not be expected to break that, for anybody. So Lawrence
asked for a piece of paper, thinking he might take an
impression from it.
"Now," said he, laying the paper on the cast, "if I
only had a piece of lead to rub on it," - for he remembered that he had often, in this way, taken quite
accurate impressions of cents and medals, when at
school. " Have you a bullet? "
"None outside of me," said the superintendent;
who went on to explain that he had one in him, received from a rebel musket.
"You were in the army, then?" said Mr. Clarence.
"Yes, with a company of our miners. We left
coal, and went into business under the rebel fortifications. Our men helped make the famous mine we
exploded before Petersburg. It was there I got my
bullet."




THE BREAKER.               117
As the said bullet was not available for artistic
purposes, Lawrence tried a lead pencil, and succeeded
in getting a fair impression of the curious bark pattern.
IV.
THE BREAKER.
"WOULD you like to look at the breaker?" then
said the superintendent.
To which Lawrence replied, " O, very much! " while
Mr. Clarence kicked his shin, and whispered, "That's
the way to do it; I knew he would come round."
So they all walked out towards the great colliery
building near by. It covered the steep slope of the
hillside, and looked, Lawrence said, as if it might
have been built as a coop for some long-necked, enormous bird.
"So it does," said the superintendent. "The highest part, which you fancy was meant to accommodate
the goose's long neck and head, is what we call the
tower. It is directly over the shaft. The wing covers, sloping away down to the railroad, are over the
shoots."
"Spelled chutes," remarked Mr. Clarence, twisting
his cane. "That is the French for falls. Did n't you
ever hear a Frenchman speak of la chute de Niagara?
You won't see a chute de Niagara here, but you'll see.chtes. anthracite coal.. Though in this case it is n't




118         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
the cataracts they call the chutes, but the wooden
spouts they run down."
The superintendent took them first into the engineroom, on the upper side of the building, close by the
shaft. There they saw several beautiful. engines at
work with so little noise that they could scarcely be
heard amid the thundering roar of the cataract of coal
launched in the tower overhead.
" This engine is for pumping the water out of the
mines," said the superintendent. "The one yonder
works the ventilating fan, that blows out the impure
air and smoke and fire-damp, and makes it possible
for men to live so far down in the earth. Here is
the breaker engine, that crushes the coal." Lastly,
he showed a strong pair of engines employed in lifting
the coal in the shaft.
"You don't have to go far for the fuel you burn,"
said Lawrence, as they went on into the boiler-room.
"Show him," said the superintendent to a stout
fireman, who threw open the iron doors beneath the
boilers, and exposed to view a glowing and flaming
bed of the very finest kind of coal, " no bigger than
peas," Lawrence said.
" We call it pea-coal," replied the superintendent.
"It is too fine to ship, and we used to throw it away
with the coal-dust. But since coal has been so high,
we have tried burning it here, and find that it does
very well."
Returning through the engine-room, they entered
the tower, and stopped at the head of the shaft. This,




THE BREAKER.              119
had for Lawrence a terrible fascination. Every three
quarters of a minute - as Mr. Clarence, who looked
at his watch, informed them - up came out of its
black depths, with fearful rapidity, a car-load of coal,
shooting past them, and disappearing with a deafening
crash in the top of the tower, high above their heads.
The shaft was double, and two sets of cars were
ascending and descending, with a parting of timber
between them. The car was supported on a strong
framework, called a carriage, which was lifted and
lowered by a long rope and a steam-engine.
" What if the rope should break?" said Lawrence,
imagining the frightful consequences of such a disaster.
" Don't you see? "'said Mr. Clarence, pointing with
his cane; "the carriage runs in the grooves of these
upright timbers. They are called guides. You see
the notches in them. Well, if the rope breaks, there
are dogs - as we call them- in the sides of the carriage, and they fall into the notches, and hold it."
" I see you know something about coal," remarked
the superintendent.
" I ought to," replied Mr. Clarence. "I intend to
follow my uncle's profession"; and he took occasion
once more to extol that celebrated mining engineer.
"It is one of the noblest professions in the world.
Civil engineering is nothing to it. A civil engineer,
laying out a railroad, or anything of the sort, works
where he can see; but a mining engineer has to work
like a mole in the dark. He must know all about the
coal-beds, how they lie, and the easiest and most




120         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
economical way of getting at them, and all that. Now
when you consider that the coal-beds in these anthracite regions lie in all sorts of ways, - as if the
country, after they were formed, had been tossed up
like the waves of a sea by the action of heat, I suppose; so that here you find them nearly level, in a
sort of basin, and there turned up edgeways, and
in another place, perhaps, regularly rolled over and
folded together, like that," - he traced out with his
cane, on the floor, the various undulations and curves
in the coal strata, very much as if he had been writing a hard word; "when you consider all that, and
reflect that sometimes these beds crop out at the surface, and sometimes dive hundreds of feet into the
earth, - you'11 conclude that a mining engineer, who
knows his business, knows something."
"There are plenty who pretend to know their
business who don't know the first thing about it,"
said the superintendent.
"Yes, and they often come and get my uncle to go
and engineer for them," said Mr. Clarence. "'But
you are an engineer, yourself,' says my uncle.'Yes,
but my eyes trouble me, - I can't see very well,' says
the fellow. So my u.cle goes and gives him a start,
and makes figures and plans for him to work after.
0," laughed Mr. Clarence, " lots of those fellows have
poor eyes, when anything requiring real skill is to be
done; though they pass for engineers and draw big
salaries. They know just enough to open a drift, or
a slope, when it has been laid out for them."




THE BREAKER.               121
"What is a drift, or a slope? " Lawrence asked.
" Why, you see, there are different ways of opening
a coal-mine. One is by a shaft, like this, when the
beds lie deep, and in a sort of basin. We go straight
down to the bottom of the lowest bed we are going
to work, and -pump out the water and draw up the
coal by steam. The drift is a gangway from the
bottom of the shaft, or a straight opening into a
nearly level coal-bed, where it crops out on some
hillside; and there the engineer must be pretty sharp,
in order to make his opening so that the mine will
drain itself, and the coal can be drawn out by mules.
The slope is an opening that goes down slantingly into a vein; in it a track is laid, and regular wheel-cars
are let down and drawn up by a steam-engine."
Lawrence wished to know more about the shaft
before them; and the superintendent explained that
it was a perpendicular opening, twenty-two feet long,
twelve broad, and two hundred and fifty feet deep.
It had been sunk by drilling and blasting through
the solid strata of rock that covered and separated
the coal-beds. It was divided, by partitions of plank
and timber, into what seemed three separate shafts,
- two for the coal-carriages, -and a third for the air
column and water-pump, which ventilated and drained
the mines.
"But what is the use of a high tower? " said Lawrence, his eyes following a coal-car as it shot up amid
the strong timbers and braces above his head.
"To get room to break, screen, and separate the
6




122         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
coal," said the superintendent. "Come up stairs, and
you will see."
The tower was fifty feet high above the mouth of
the shaft; and it would have had to be built still
higher, Mr. Clarence observed, had not the slope of
the hill made room for the bins below. They went
up by narrow wooden staircases, through the " screenroom" and " plate-room" (which the superintendent
said they should see again as they came down),
amidst clouds of coal-dust, and blackened beams and
braces, to the summit of the black-raftered and highwindowed tower.  Mr. Clarence came last, having
stopped to set Muff to guarding his cane in the
engine-room, in order to prevent that white sheep
of a dog from becoming a black one.
" Here you'll see what makes the noise," said the
superintendent.
As he spoke, up came a coal-car, and stopped before
their eyes. It was loaded, as Lawrence now had a
chance to see, with huge lumps or fragments, some of
immense size and weight. It seemed endowed with
intelligence of its own, for the moment it arrived in
the right place it threw out its own end-board, and
immediately tipped up, casting its contents into an
opening through the floor, called a "dump." Some
of the great lumps tumbled over the sides of tlhe
opening, and made Lawrence jump to take care of his
toes.
An attendant (" That's the ticket-boss," said Mr.
Clarence), begrimed from head to foot with coal-dust,




THE BREAKER.              123
now stepped forward, tumbled the scattered lumps
into the dump, took something from a little hook in
the car, pulled a bell as a signal to the engineer, and
closed up the end-board as the empty car fell back
into its place on the carriage. The car now dropped
swiftly down into the shaft again; while the man,
glancing at the little thing he had taken out of it,
proceeded to put it away in a box of pigeon-holes.
"That's the ticket," said Mr. Clarence.  "You
did n't know they had to have tickets on these cars,
did you? "
Lawrence looked puzzled, and the superintendent
explained. " This little piece of brass " —he took the
ticket from its pigeon-hole —" has a number on it. It
is number thirty-seven. That is the number of the
chamber or breast in which that load of coal was mined.
There is one miner in each chamber; he has his
package of tickets, and he puts one in every car he
sends out. The tickets are collected by the ticketboss here, and all the thirty-sevens are put into
pigeon-hole thirty-seven. So with the other tickets.
Then, at night, the tickets in each pigeon-hole show
just how many loads of coal are to be credited to each
miner."
" How many, on an average, will there be?"
" Seven is the rule; and each car-load must be a
ton and a half."
" Do you weigh it?"
" No. The ticket-boss can tell by his eye if it is
full weight. If it is n't, he docks the miner for the




124         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
deficiency. Or he docks him if there is too much
slate in his coal."
" Seven car-loads, - a ton and a half to the load,
-ten and a half tons," said Lawrence. "Does one
miner get out all that, in a day?"
"You must know there are two distinct classes of
laborers in the mines," said the superintendent.
"Each miner has possession of a chamber and we
deal only with him. He finds his own tools, powder,
oil, everything; and hires a common laborer to help
him.  The laborer knows not much more about
mining than you do, and he is not called a miner,
though he works in the mines. He loads the coal,
and helps the miner in many ways. These two get
out their seven loads, - or more, if they choose; and
we pay the miner ninety-seven cents a load."
" Six dollars and seventy-nine cents a day!" said
Lawrence, who was quick at figures. "That's good
wages."
"So it is, even after the miner has paid his expenses out of it. His powder costs him a dollar a day.
He pays his laborer now, I believe, two dollars and
ten cents a day. He has nearly three dollars and a
half left for himself, even if he gets out only sevenloads. But some miners get out eight or nine loads a
day; and, after making due allowance for stoppages,
on account of accidents, or a dull market, earn their
thousand or twelve hundred dollars a year. You will
notice that those who confine themselves to their
seven loads will go home this afternoon at three or
four o'clock."




THE BREAKER.              125
" What sort of people are they?" Lawrence wished
to know.
"They are all Welsh, in these mines. And a respectable, thrifty class they are, generally. They have
their church-meetings, and their Sunday school, and
week-day school for their children, like any other
class. A few of them are dissipated and shiftless, and
spend all they earn. But the most of them are sober
and industrious, and provide well for their families.
Some have laid up handsome little fortunes, all earned
in the mines."
"They are a much better class than the miners
down in the Schuylkill district," said Mr. Clarence.
"There we have all sorts, but mostly Irish of the
worst kind. Every once in a while some of them will
get up a strike. The strikers go round to all the
mines, and force everybody to stop work until everybody gets an increase of wages. If they don't like a
boss, they give him warning to quit, and if he -don't
quit they kill him. Riots are quite common, and the
governor has had to call out the militia to put them
down."
" How many miners are at work in this mine?"
Lawrence asked. "And how many men, besides?"
"We have forty-eight chambers running now; that
makes forty-eight miners," said the superintendent.
"These, with their laborers, and a small army of men
and boys employed in various other ways, —mule
drivers, slate-pickers, and so forth, - make a force of
over three hundred."




126         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
All the while they were talking the loads of coal
keptthundering into the dump. They now descended
into the room below, to see what next became of it.
There it was received on a set of strong, slanting iron
plates, forming a sort of spout from the dump above
to the breaker below, and so arranged as to let the
small pieces of coal drop through between them, as
the cataract poured down. The big lumps rushed on
to the breaker, guided by four stout Irishmen, armed
with strong iron rakes. There was something terrible
in the way the great lumps and blocks of anthracite
came crashing and bounding down these plates; and
Lawrence observed that the men had to work hard to
take care of them.
"Yes," one said;' the coal bosses us. If we had
a boss that drove us half as hard, we'd be kickin'
him out." And he grinned through his grime of coaldust.
The breaker looked like a great coffee-mill; and
the most of the coal went into its hopper. To see
what became of it after it was crushed, the lads followed their guide to the room below.
Here was a lively scene. The first thing ILawrence
noticed was a long, cylindrical screen, as large as a
good-sized saw-log, rolling over and over, high up in
the back part of the room. It was sifting the crushed
coal, which was poured into one end of it by a spout
from the breaker above. It was inclined just enough
to let the coal roll and rattle down slowly from the
upper towards the lower end, as it revolved. The




THE BREAKER.    127
8 *
c oii
M ~ ~ ~   4-__
0~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~R




128         AAIONG THE COAL-MINERS.
finest coal and dust fell out of it, first, into a second
screen, which separated them. Next, coal of four
different sizes fell into four separate spouts, or chutes,
the largest size coming out of the coarsest meshes at
the lower end of the screen.  These screens and
chutes occupied one entire division of the room; and
Lawrence now saw that there was another division,
the exact counterpart of this; so that there were in all
four screens and eight chutes. The two upper screens
slanted each way from  the breaker above, and the
chutes distributed  the torrent of coal into little
streams which poured down through the room.
Here were the "pickers"; and  quick-fingered,
sharp-eyed, black-nosed  little people they were.
There were over forty in the room,  boys of various
ages, sitting on the sides of the chutes, or on boards
laid across, one above the other, picking out pieces of
slate and "bony" coal, as the black streams poured
down. What one did not get, those below him  on
the chute were expected to see and take out. The
little hands flew fast; and the bad pieces went into
wooden "slate-pockets" between the chutes. Lawrence, who could scarcely tell slate from coal at first
sight, was amazed at their quickness of eye and hand.
"They are certainly throwing away coal! " said he,
taking a lump.which one was casting out.
"That's nothing but bone," said Mr. Clarence.  "It
came very near being coal, but I suppose there was
a little too much earthy mud mixed with the carbon
of the decaying forests. All our coal-beds are full of




THE BREAKER.              129
slaty and bony seams, as you will see when we go
into the mines."
"The best we can do," said the superintendent, "a
good deal of slate comes to the breaker, and has to
be picked out here. The miners call it collum. Culm
is the proper word. They call everything collum that
goes into the waste heap. Would you like to look at
that?"
They went down into an archway beneath the
screen-room, where they found a mule-car loading
under a spout which led from one of the cuhn-bins.
The car filled, the spout was closed, and the mule
was driven off with his load along a track laid across
the summit of an immense black mound, or small
mountain, as it might truly be called. It spread out
into the valley below, and must have contained hundreds of thousands of tons of "collum," —being
composed entirely of slate and bone and coal-dust
from this single colliery.
" We dump here a hundred and twenty-five loads a
day," said the superintendent.
" In and about Scranton," remarked Mr. Clarence,
"there are a dozen collieries, and each one has just
such a'collum dump,' as they call it. You have
only to go around and look at them, to get a tolerably big idea of the coal business of this little
town."
On the steep sides of the black mountain three or
four women and one crippled old man were picking
out the best pieces of bony coal, or pieces of slate to
6*




130         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
which a little coal adhered, and putting them into
bags and baskets to burn or to sell.
From the culm dump the superintendent took his
young friends down the hill-slope to the coal-bins,
under the chutes, and showed them a coal-train
loading from spouts.
"So you don't have to shovel or handle the coal at
all," said Lawrence.
"' Not from the time it leaves the miner's chamber.
From there it is drawn by mules to the foot of the
shaft; then it is lifted by machinery, and poured
through the breaker and down the chutes, travelling
by its own weight, until it is taken off by the cars
here. Even the cars, as you see," added the superintendent, "are so constructed that the coal can be
dumped from them on to a coal-wharf, or into the
hold of a vessel, through spouts, still without handling."
V.
THE SHAFT.
THEY now returned to the engine-room, where Mr.
Clarence found Muff keeping faithful guard over his
cane.  "Present arms!" said Mr. Clarence. And
Muff, getting up on his hind legs and turning about,
with the cane balanced in his mouth, allowed his
master to take it out. "Thank you," said Mr. Clarence. And after that the dog went wherever the
boys did.




THE SHAFT.              131
"I see you looking anxiously at the shaft," said the
superintendent, smiling at Lawrence. "Won't you
be afraid to go down?"
"I don't think I shall be afraid to go where anybody else does," said Lawrence, gazing down into the
shaft. But even as he spoke, he started back.
Suddenly up out of the black pit rose a figure like
a ghost. It was a moment before Lawrence perceived
that it was really a form of flesh and blood, and,
moreover, a boy of about his own age. He was
standing on the naked beams of the carriage, with
just one hand outstretched, holding on by a brace.
This was all that supported him on his dark journey
up the shaft. There was a little tin lamp hooked
into his cap; the sallow flame of which, together with
spots and streaks of coal-dust on his face, gave a sort
of unearthly cast to his complexion. He wore no
coat, and his shirt was open at the throat. The carriage stopped when on a level with the floor at the
head of the shaft; he stepped off, and it sank down
into the pit again.
" How would you like to ride in that style?" asked
the superintendent.
Lawrence thought that if another boy could hold
on he could, and said he would like it.
"Well," said the superintendent, "I think we can
do a little better by you than that. These boys ride
up and down any way. I shall expect to see them
clinging on to the rope like monkeys, soon. Owen,"
said he to the ghost, "I want you to go through the




T~~~~~~o
ii   m~   i     ~!i io
THE___A__ L_-__T.!E1 t
CC
0j
TUF~; COLSI4




THE SHAFT.              133
mines with these young gentlemen, if you have
time."
"I've time enough," said Owen; and his face
lighted up with a bright and friendly smile, - not at
all ghostly.
"What did I tell you?" Mr. Clarence whispered
to Lawrence, while the superintendent went for another'lamp.
The lamp was brought, —a little teapot-shaped
thing, with a hook for a handle, and a lighted wick
in the spout. Lawrence took it. Then an empty car
was stopped at the head of the shaft, and the three
lads stepped into it, - Mr. Clarence with Muff in
his arms. Then the signal was given; the car began
to sink; and darkness surrounded them, streaked only
by the dim rays of the lamps.
"Good by," cried the superintendent, from above.
"Good by," echoed the voices of the boys, from the
depths of the hollow-sounding shaft.
Down, down went the car, steadily, but by no means
so fast as when it bore no freight of human lives.
Lawrence held tight to his little lamp with one hand,
and to the brace with the other, while he tried to get
some idea of the depth of the shaft, by reflecting that,
if the partitions were taken out, Bunker Hill Monument would have made a very good plug for it.
"Are you afraid?" said Owen, laughing. "A terrible accident happened in a shaft near here the other
day "; and a shadow passed over his face at the recollection. "A crowd of men were going into the mines




134         AMONG THE- COAL-MINERS.
one morning. They did n't like to wait, so seventeen
of'em piled on to one car at once. The rope broke,
and they fell two hundred feet. Fourteen got killed,
and the other three got maimed for life."
"That's a cheerful story to tell, when we are halfway down a shaft," said Mr. Clarence.
"I thought you said there were iron dogs to fall
into these notches in the guides, and hold the car, if
the rope should break," said Lawrence.
"The dogs would hold a loaded car that was going
up, or a light load going down," said Owen.
"Because," added Mr. Clarence, "a car going up
must stop before it can fall; but, going down, it is
already in motion, and if it has a heavy load on, it
will break everything before it. But here we are, all
right. Step out."
Lawrence was at first so bewildered that he hardly
knew which way to step. He seemed to have dropjped
suddenly into the heart of an immense, black, branching cavern. Strange noises filled his ears, and glancing lights moved like fireflies through tile darkness.
Then dim forms and sooty faces and shining eyes
appeared around him. Everything had such an unearthly look, that for a moment he could have fancied
that he was in the bottomless pit, and that these were
its proper inhabitants.
"Lean on me, look!" said Owen, "then you shall
not black yourself." So Lawrence got out of the car
without rubbing his clothes against it. "This way,
look! " cried Owen, again. "There's water I"




THE SHAFT.               135
The reservoir, or well, from which the Water of the
mines was pumped, was directly beneath the car, at
the foot of the shaft; and Lawrence thought he meant
that. In avoiding it he ran under a little streaming
shower that dripped from some point above - which
was, in fact, the water Owen had wished to warn him
against.
"What a stupid fellow  I am!" he exclaimed.
"There goes my light! " - his little teapot of a lamp
having been extinguished in his brief passage under
the shower-bath.
"Never mind; I can light it," said Owen; and
whilst he was-touching the flame of his own to the
drenched wick, Lawrence had time to look about him
and see more plainly where they were.
He now perceived that the lights and the demons
he had seen were men and boys with lamps on their
caps, and that the sounds he heard were the shouts of
mule-drivers and the tinkling of mule-bells, mingled
with the noise of water falling into the well.
" Now you see where the loads of coal come from,"
said Mr. Clarence.
The empty'car in which they made the descent had
already been pushed off from the carriage, along a
track laid level with it; and now a loaded car, standing near by, was seized by men and boys, and pushed
on. A bell-wire was then pulled (" Signal for the
engineer," said Mr. Clarence), and up went the carriage, with the car on it, disappearing instantly in the
darkness of the shaft.




136         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
"Hark! " said Mr. Clarence. And in a few seconds
they heard the faint thunder-peal of a load of coal
dumped into the breaker three hundred feet above.
"That's disposing of a ton and a half of coal on
short notice," said Mr. Clarence. And almost while
he was speaking the car came down again empty.
Then another car was pushed on, and sent up.
There was a long row of loaded cars waiting on the
track, and others were coming in little trains of four
or five, drawn by mules, out of the depths of the
cavern. The whole made a picture which, seen by
the dim light of the lamps, in the midst of surrounding blackness, had a strange fascination for the eyes
of Lawrence.
Mr. Clarence now put down his dog Muff, and told
him to take care of himself.
"I should think he would get as dirty here as in
the breaker," said Lawrence.
"It's a different kind of dirt," said Mr. Clarence.
"It will be all on the outside, if he rubs against anything. But in the breaker he would get the coal-dust
sifted into his wool, so it could never be washed out."
"See here a minute," said Owen;, and lie led
Lawrence to a frame of rough boards, like a box, set
into the wall of the cavern. There were two holes in
it, like a pair of great eyes, and he told Lawrence to
look in through one of them.
Lawrence climbed up on a ledge of slate, put his
eye to the hole, and' uttered an exclamation of surprise. He had expected to see nothing but darkness,




THE SHAFT.              137
in such a place; but it was like looking into a showbox.
"What do you see?" said Mr. Clarence.
"I see a little room, with a clock in it."
"What time is it?" asked Owen.
"Ten minutes past three,- as plain as can be!
Where does the light come from on the face of the
clock? "
Lawrence looked around, and saw Owen at his side
laughing.
"Where did it come from? Look again," said Owen.
He looked again, and declared that the box was as
dark as a pocket. Then in an instant it was lighted
up again. Turning his head quickly, he saw Owen
holding a lamp at the other hole.
"Why do you keep a clock boxed up in that way?"
he asked.
"It's handy, look!" said Owen. "A man wants
to know the time; he puts his eye to one hole, and,
his lamp to the other, and there it is. If the clock
was n't boxed up, it would n't be there to-morrow."
"I see," said Lawrence, who understood that it
would be stolen.
A number of men, with lamps otL their hats and tin
pails in their hands, were coming along by the railroad
track, and crowding near the shaft.
"They have got through work, and are waiting to
go up," said Owen.
Half a dozen of them jumped into the next empty
car that came down, the engineer was signalled to lift
slowly, and up they went to the head of the shaft.




138         AMONG TIHE COAL-MINERS.
VI.
IN THE GANGWAY.
"I SEE here but one set of cars going up and down,"
said Lawrence. "But at the head of the shaft they
were moving on both sides."
" We are working two veins of coal," said Owen.
"This is what we call the Rock Vein; the other is
the Diamond Vein, thirty feet above. The other cars
stop there."
"Thirty feet! and what is between the two veins?"
"Slate, mostly. There's always layers of sandstone,
limestone, slate, clay, - one or all of'em, - between
the different coal veins," said Owen. And seeing the
astonishment of Lawrence, who, after all he had heard
and read on the subject, had but a faint idea of a coal
formation, he continued, " Fifty feet below this vein
there is another,- what we call the Big Vein, -
fourteen feet thick. Then there are five more veins
below that. There are two more above the Diamond.
They will all pay to work, some day, after we get
these two veins worked out. Then there are several
little veins besides."
"By veins," said Mr. Clarence, "he means seamns or
beds. Coal lies in layers, which can't properly be
called veins, though this is the term used everywhere
in the anthracite regions, - except by my uncle and
myself," he added, with pleasing vanity.  "Some
minerals lie in streaks; and those are properly called




IN THE GANGWAY.              139
veins. Go into the soft-coal regions, and you won't
hear coal-beds called veins."
" Why are they called so here?"
"I suppose it is because the anthracite beds are so
tumbled and broken up in some places. Just here
you see them lying nearly all on a level, or undulating
something like the surface of a hilly country..But
go into mines where I have been!  Some of the
seams are perpendicular, or keeled over, or broken up
by faults, so that it appears ridiculous to call them
beds."
"Are n't the soft-coal beds tumbled up too?"
"Nothing like the anthracite.   They all lie as
nearly level as these beds here.  There's a very
pretty scientific fact connected with this difference in
the two formations," Mr. Clarence continued.  "Soft
coal is more or less bituminous, while anthracite has
no bitumen in it. But there's no doubt but what
they were both formed in the same way, and out of
the same materials. The ancient forests I told you
of decayed in the water and made black mud, which
a certain degree of heat and pressure condensed into
soft coal. There the bituminous coal-fields were left,
and were not much disturbed afterwards. But in the
anthracite region there was subsequent volcanic
action, which heaved and broke up the coal measures,
and with its intense heat expelled the bituminous
matters and hardened the coal still more. The best
evidence in support of this theory is, that here you
have igneous rocks, - or rocks that were melted




140         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
matter when they were heaved up from the bowels
of the earth, - while in the bituminous regions you
have none."
"Are the anthracite regions as extensive as the
bituminous?"
" My dear sir, nothing in comparison. The biggest
pait of the anthracite coal-field lies in Luzerne and
Schuylkill Counties, here in Eastern Pennsylvania;
while the bituminous coal-fields extend over nearly
all the western portion of the State, and over large
portions of other States, and over other parts of the
world; though I believe," added Mr. Clarence, "that
a little anthracite is found, in the neighborhood of
igneous rocks, in some bituminous regions. This is
all Greek to you, is n't it, my little Welshman?" he
said to Owen.
"I don't understand anything about it," replied:
Owen, laughing.
" I knew it," said Mr. Clarence. "It is singular,men who work in coal-mines all their lives generally
know nothing more about the history of the coal
formation than your day-laborers in Massachusetts.
Some men who call themselves mining engineers are
just as ignorant. Yet this Welsh boy can tell you
all about the coal, as it lies in the mines, and the
gangways and chambers are as familiar to him as the
streets of your native village are to you. How thick,
Owen, is this'Rock Vein,' as you call it? "
"Nine feet," replied Owen, quickly. "The Diamond Vein is seven feet."




IN THE GANGWAY.              141
"All solid coal?" said Lawrence, looking at the
-black wall of the cavern.
"All but the slate in it. The coal is in three
benches," said Owen.
Then Lawrence had to ask what benches were;
and Mr. Clarence was well pleased to be able to inform him.
" I told you how layers of slate occur in the coalbeds, did n't I? The bed may be even twenty or
thirty feet thick, but- it won't be one clean body of
coal. Every two or three feet, or oftener, you come
to a thin seam of slate running through it. The coal
that lies in tlese natural divisions, between the slate
seams, we call benches. Here there is a roof of slate."
Mr. Clarence took the lamp from Lawrence's hand,
and held it high above their heads. "Then, between
that and the bottom," -passing the lamp down the
wall, -" there are two slate seams; see if you can tell
where they are."
"It all looks alike to me, coal and slate," said Lawrence, his eye glancing along the uniform blackness
of the wall. "Ah!" he suddenly exclaimed, "I see!
This little ridge! Here must be one of the slate
seams! and here is the other!"
"You would make a miner," said Owen, smiling,
as they walked on.
"Are you a miner?" Lawrence asked.
" My father is, and I mean to be. I come down at
noon to bring his dinner, and stop and help him
sometimes."




142         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
"Do you like it?"
"I like it well. If you work in the mines awhile,"
said Owen, "you never want to do anything else.
Once a miner, always a miner,' my father says."
"Why so?" said Lawrence.
"The miner is his own boss, look," said Owen,
stopping, and facing the visitors, his bright Welsh
eyes shining withl animation under his lamp-hung
cap. "He can work, or he can sit still. He works
six or eight hours a day, and earns good pay. It is
never hot and it is never cold in the mines. It is
about the same thing the year round. You work
here a few years, then you go to work outside, and it
is bad. You can't stand the heat. You can't stand
the cold. You are glad to get back into the mines."
They walked on again, keeping the car-track, between black walls of coal. " It is like a street railroad," said Lawrence, - "only the track is narrow,
and the street is n't so wide as I thought it was."
"This is what we call a gangway, or drift," said Mr.
Clarence. " It is the main passage from the breasts
or chambers to the shaft.. It is cut out just the depth
of the coal-bed, and wide enough to accommodate the
cars.  In thin coal-beds, —they often work those
that are only two or three feet thick,- they cut
down enough of the top rock to make a passage for
the cars.
"And to give the miners room to work, I suppose,"
said Lawrence.
"No," said Owen; "miners can work where a man




IN THE GANGWAY.              143
can't stand. My father once worked in a coal-vein,
in the old country, where he had to lie on his side
when he used the pick. The vein was only a foot
and a half thick; but he got out the coal."
"Then why not invent a low car, that will carry
the coal through low gangways, and save cutting out
the rock?" said Lawrence.
"To invent a low car is easy enough," said Mr.
Clarence, with a laugh at his friend's simplicity; " but
it is n't so easy to invent a low mule."
Owen laughed too. Lawrence was glad his blushes
were hidden by the darkness of the drift. But, to
show that he had not spoken so inconsiderately as
Mr. Clarence supposed, he retorted quickly, "Haul
the cars by machinery; — why not?"
"That's not so bad an idea," said Mr. Clarence, his
respect for his friend's intelligence somewhat restored.
"My father tells how, in the old country, women
used to carry the coal out of the mines," said Owen.
"The men mined it, and the women carried it., A
woman would carry a load of coal heavier than she
was up slopes, or stairs; and maybe she would have
a quarter of a mile to travel before she could put it
down."
" That is a horrible story! " said Lawrence, who had
never seen women do hard work, and could scarcely
believe that such things were tolerated in a Christian
country.
"A reform, in this resp'ect, has taken place in the
British collieries,- within a few years," said Mr. Clar



144         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
ence. "Now a small steam-engine that burns only
four or five tons of coal a day does work it would take
five hundred women to do."
Lawrence concluded that steam was a good missionary, if it could convert people from such barbarous
practices.
"It is the great agent of modern civilization," said
Mr. Clarence, in his eloquent way. "Our steamships,
railroads, factories, a thousand industrial enterprises,
are dependent upon it; but what is steam itself dependent on? Without coal, steam would be a limping
cripple. This big black fellow, in whose bed we now
are, is doing a good share of the work of the world.
Did I say four or five tons did the work of five hundred women? It is a low estimate. Ten pounds of
coal, economically applied to steam-power, are considered equal to a, day's work by one man. Then a
ton and a half of coal may be set down as equal to
the labor of one man for a year. I have seen a careful calculation, to that effect, in one of my uncle's
books."'
"I wonder who first thought of digging out coal
and burning it," said Lawrence.
"Nobody knows who first used soft coal for fuel,"
Mr. Clarence replied. " It has been in use in England for hundreds-of years, though it was only after
the forests began to disappear, and the steam-engine
was invented, and gas-light came into fashion, that
the immense coal-trade was developed which now
makes the prosperity of that little island. This an



IN THE GANGWAY.              145
thracite business is another thing. It has all been
developed within fifty years, though there is evidence
that the first blacksmiths in the country began to use
the stone coal, as it was called (anthracite is only a
Greek word for the same thing), a hundred years ago.
It took the rest of the world half a century to find out
how to burn the thing.  Neither philosophers nor
fools could make a fire of it, in a common stove or fireplace. Bituminous coal will kindle and burn with a
flame like wood; but hard coal,required different
treatment, and a peculiar kind of grate. Then, when
it did burn, it was found superior to any other coal
for many purposes. Though hard to kindle, it makes
an intense heat, and no smoke. And now," Mr. Clarence concluded, "though it is confined to so small an
area, compared with the vast fields of bituminous coal,
there is about as much anthracite mined in this State,
every year, as there is of other coal."
Meanwhile, the boys walked on through the black
gangway, which seemed interminable to Lawrence. It
was lighted only by the two little lamps they carried,
which made a dim halo about them, in the midst of
darkness that retreated slowly before, and followed
close behind, as they moved on. Occasionally, little
incidents diversified the gloomy monotony of the trip.
Now they approached a faintly-shining beam, seen
afar off in the cavernous darkness, which grew to a
little yellow glow in a corner, as they came near, and
proved to be the light of a tiny lamp on the ground,
close under the wall of coal. Sitting near it, between
7                         J




146         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
THE DOORKEEPER.
two stout wooden props supporting the slate roof, was
a boy, who seemed at first glance a mere imp of darkness. Ile was not more than nine or ten years old,
and O so small and black! He seemed to be playing
with something on a black slab of slate, between him
and the lamp. On coming np to him, what was Lawrence's surprise to see. that the little fellow was amus



IN THE GANGWAY.             147
ing himself, there in the solitude of the mine, with a
pack of cards almost as black as his fingers.
Close by was a large wooden door which completely
closed the gangway, -" to shut off the air-current,
and force it in another direction," Mr. Clarence said,and this child was the doorkeeper.
"Are n't you lonesome here? " Lawrence asked.
"Not much," the urchin replied, looking up with a
grin. " It ain't so nice when my lamp burns out, and
I can't get oil. But the mule-teams are passing all
the time."
While he was speaking the shout of a driver was
heard, and a light was seen approaching. Then appeared a train of empty cars, accompanied by a boy,
with the usual lamp on his hat. The child sprang to
his feet, and threw the gate open; Owen and the two
visitors stepped aside between the props of the gangway; the train passed through, the driver shouting to
the trampling mules, and the great door flapped together again.
The visitors and their guide soon followed the
train, while the little fellow returned to his cheerful
game of cards.
"How I pity him!" said Lawrence. "I wish I
could give him something to amuse him, alone there
in the dark!"
"He is well enough off," laughed Owen. "He is
happy. You should hear my father tell of boys in the
mines of the old country, who can't even have a light."
Along a channel beside the gangway flowed a rivulet




148         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
towards the shaft,- its low, gentle ripple sounding
hollow and strange in those dismal depths. That was
all the noise they heard for some distance, as they
walked on. Then suddenly came a terrific thunderpeal, which seemed to shake the earth, and made
Lawrence for a moment think the roof was coming
down upon their heads.
"Now here we are, look!" was all the comment
Owen made upon this little incident, which might
well startle a stranger.
VII.
THE MINERS AT WORK.
THEY passed a railroad switch, and followed a side
track, which turned off into what seemed a winding
cavern. It was narrow at the entrance, but it grew
wider and wider, as they advanced. All was dark
before them at first, but as they kept on around the
curve of the track, dim lights appeared, glimmering
through a thick, bluish cloud. The broad, flat roof
was supported by rows of wooden props. Beside the
car-track were heaps of slate that had been taken out
of the coal. And now Lawrence, if he had not already
guessed the nature of the explosion he had heard, was
made aware of it by the strong odor of blasting-powder
which swept over him with a cloud of smoke.
"This is what we call a chamber, or breast," said
Mr. Clarence.




THE MINERS AT WORK.          149
At the farther end of it, where the lights were,
seventy-five or eighty yards from the entrance, two
men were at work in the thickest of the smoke. One
was clearing away the fragments which the blast had
blown out from the bottom of the coal-seam. This
was the miner's " laborer." The other was examining
the opening that had just been made, and evidently
studying how to place his next charge of powder.
This was the miner himself. Both were begrimed
with powder-smoke and coal-dust, the effect of which
was heightened, to Lawrence's imagination, by the
cloud and stench in which they worked.
Owen stepped nimbly over the rubbish, the others
following, - all but Muff. Mr. Clarence had left
him, with his cane, at the entrance to the chamber.
Then Owen astonished Lawrence very much by saying quietly, as the miner turned and looked at them,
with an honest, kindly face under its grime,"This is my father."
Lawrence was, in fact, taken so much by surprise
at this introduction, that he offered to shake hands,
— an evidence of weakness on his part that once
more, for the moment, quite lost him the respect of
his friend, Mr. Clarence.
The sensible Welshman declined the honor, showing his blackened hands, and said, "You have come
to see the coal-mines, have you?"
Lawrence said he had, and began to ask questions
with regard to the manner in which the coal was got
out.




150         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.!!  %~                            el
_~_-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~j~
ii~Z E~"~'~'~ ~  ~e~a~B[ k~:




THE MINERS AT WORK.          151
"It is very simple, look!" replied the miner. (The
father, like the son, had an odd way of throwing in
that little word look, when he was speaking.) "You
put in your charge of powder, and blow it out."
"Do you have to blow tll of it? "
"Every yard.  I work under the vein, look. I
work out here a space, at the bottom, about five feet
high, and twelve feet deep. Then I put in a heavy
charge above, and blow down the top."
" How much coal do you blow out at a time?"
"A couple of. tons or so, when I am working out
the bottom. Then when I blow down the top, I get
a good many tons, sometimes."
"You must drill pretty deep for that."
"Yes, we sink the drill five or six feet generally,
to get a good blast. There's everything in taking advantage of the way the coal lays.  It is n't like
mining soft coal, look. There you work under the
bottom bench with a pick, and then break down the
rest from the top with wedges. You don't blast at
all, only when the rock is in your'way."
" What sound is that? " asked Lawrence.
Both men had stopped work for the moment; and
now could be heard a regular, dull click-click-click,
which seemed to be somewhere in the solid wall of
coal close beside them.
"That is the miner drilling in the next chamber."
"How far off is he?"
"About twenty feet. He keeps his breast along
about even with mine. We are in, now, about two
hundred and fifty feet from the gangway."




152         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
"H ow deep do you drive your chambers?"
"About three hundred feet, along here.  Sometimes we go deeper, and sometimes not so deep."
"Then how do you get out the coal beyond? "
"Drive breasts from other gangways," said the
miner.
Lawrence could have remained a long time watching him at his work, and talking with him; but
Owen suggested that they had a great deal yet to see,
and that it was getting late. So they took leave of
the miner, and started to go back to the entrance to
the chamber, where Mr. Clarence had left Muff.
In the next chamber they found two men and a
boy. The miner, whom they had already heard at
his work, through the immense partition-wall, - or
"pillar," as it is called, - was standing on a pile of
rubbish driving his drill horizontally into the face of
the coal-seam near the top. The laborer was separating the large fragments of coal from the slate, and
the boy was sitting on a heap, separating the smaller
pieces. They cast the slate aside, and threw the coal
into a car, which had been drawn in on the track to
the end of the chamber to be loaded.
In another chamber they found the miner working
in under the seam. He was several feet beyond the
face of it, and the top part hung over him and his
little lamp like a tremendous ledge of black rock. It
was so low that he could not stand erect. The boys,
stooping, went in where he was at work.
"I have just this corner to blow out," he told




THE MINERS AT WORK.           153
them; "then I shall put in a charge under the roof,
and bring down all this coal overhead."
Lawrence asked if he did n't find it hard work to
drill'where he had to stoop so low.
"This is nothing," said the man. And he went on
to tell how he had worked in coal-seams so thin that
the miner could never stand upright, from the moment he entered his chamber till he left it.  "I
mined in one such," said he, "that pitched like the
roof of a house. Imagine two steep roofs, one four
feet above the other, and yourself getting out coal
between them."
"How did you manage it? Did you work down
from the top?"
"We worked up from the bottom. We kept the
gangway below us, and run the coal down to it in
chutes."
In another chamber they found the miner just preparing to blast. The boys retreated around the curve
at the entrance, and waited for the fire to eat its way
up through the fuse into the powder. Then came the
explosion. Lawrence was expecting it, this time, and
was not frightened; yet there was to his inexperienced
nerves something fearful in the sudden concussion of
air, which seemed to smite him with an angry buffet
in the face and breast. The vast pillars of coal that
upheld the hill seemed to tremble; and the roaring
gust of sound swept on through the recesses of the
mines.
7*




154         AMONG THE COAL-AIINERS.
VIII.
CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.
IN traversing the gangways and chambers, Lawrence
noticed many places where there had evidently once
been openings in the walls, but which were now
closed. Some were boarded up, and some were built up
with slabs of slate. Those on one side of the gangway, Owen said, were the entrances to old chambers
that had been worked out and closed up. " Those on
the other side are air-courses. They go through into
another gangway, parallel to this. Wherever we run
one gangway, look, we run another alongside of it.
They are thirty feet apart. The chambers branch off
to the right from the gangway we are in; and they
branch off to the left from the other."
"Why do you run two gangways?'
"To get ventilation.   You don't understand."
Owen, in his eagerness to explain, dropped down in a
half-sitting posture against the coal-pillar, and, taking
a piece of chalk from his pocket, drew a white line
down a leg of his trousers, while Lawrence held his
little lamp, and Mr. Clarence and Muff looked on.
"Now this is the gangway, look. Now this is the
other gangway, look "; and he drew a parallel line.
"Now these are the cross-cuts, or air-passages "; and
he united the two with short chalk-lines drawn across
from one to the other at intervals.  "They are a
hundred and twenty feet apart. Now here, on the




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.         1-55
OWEN'S DIAGRAM.
opposite side from the air-courses, are the chambers.
They sweep round the way they do, for the car-track
must be curved; the cars could n't very well turn a
square corner, look. The openings to the chambers
are fifteen feet wide, with fifty-four feet of pillar
between."
"Why so thick a pillar?"
"To hold the roof up. But the chambers branch




156         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
out, as you go in, till they leave only twenty foot of
pillar between them. That's as little as it is safe to
leave. The wooden props just keep the roof of the
chamber from falling; but the pillars are the main
support. Rob them, and your whole roof is coming
down, look!"
Lawrence did look, with a slight start, but perceived
that his roof was safe and that Owen was merely illustrating a possibility.
" Now about the ventilation. Miners could n't live,
a day without that. The fire-damp would fill up the
mines, and cause explosions. Then the powder-smoke
and the breaths of so many men and mules would be
stifling. So, in driving a gangway, you shall drive an
air-course all -the way beside it, - as they do in some
mines,- or drive a parallel gangway, so as to send
the air-current up one and down the other.  You
make this cross-cut, look, to let the air pass through.
Then, when you get much beyond that, you open a
new cross-cut, and close up the last one. In this way
you keep on, closing up the cross-cuts behind you, so
as to force the air always through the new one, near
where you are at work. Then there are cross-cuts
from one chamber to another, and the air is driven
through them by shutting a door in the gangway.
When the miner gets much beyond a cross-cut, he
begins to suffer for air; so he opens another, and
stops the last one."
Owen had by this time a rude diagram on his trousers, the black surface of which represented the coal,




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.       157
while the white lines and filling represented gangways,
air-courses, and chambers. He now proceeded to show
how the currents of air circulated through the mines,
and were drawn out by means of the ventilating fan
in the air-shaft.
Mr. Clarence meanwhile looked on somewhat superciliously. "Just lend me your trousers-leg and piece
of chalk a minute," he said, giving his cane to Muff
to hold. "That" - pointing at Owen's diagram —
" is an absurd system of mining and ventilation. Now
this is my uncle's system." Using the Welsh boy's
patches for a blackboard, he prepared to demonstrate.
" It saves a large part of this astonishing waste of coal
left in the pillars, for one thing. And besides-"
At that moment Muff dropped the cane and darted
with wild yelps into the darkness.
"What's that? " cried Mr. Clarence, jumpipgup.
"It must be a cat! He's a terrible fellow for cats.
If I don't look out, I shall lose him! "
"If he follows the cat, I know just where she'll go,"
said Owen, putting his blackboards in lively motion,
and following the dog that had followed the cat, while
Lawrence and Mr. Clarence followed him.
He soon brought them to what Lawrence at first
thought was a coal-chamber; but, on entering it, he
found it was a stable. The floor was littered, and,
ranged along by the wall, was a row of mangers, under
one of which they found Muff, sure enough, barking
at a hole where his game had found refuge.
" The cats down here are used to dogs," said Owen.
"Here's where they generally hide from'em."




158         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
" Cats and dogs in the mines! " exclaimed Lawrence,
"That is what I never expected to see."
"One of our miners has a dog that brings him his
dinner. He comes to the head of the shaft at noon,
with the pail in his mouth, and waits till a car is
stopped for somebody going down; then he jumps
aboard, and jumps out again at the foot of the shaft,
and finds his way to the chamber where his master
is, without any light, unless the mule-teams happen
to be passing."
Lawrence was much interested in this and other
dog-stories Owen and Clarence had to tell. But what
was the use of cats in the mines?
" To kill off the rats," said Owen.
"You have rats down here too? "
"We used to have thousands of'em. They got so
thick one time, before we had cats, that they had no
fear of you at all. They would fill a manger soon as
ever you fed a mule, and go to eating right at his
nose. You could take up a shovelful of'em. You
might kill as many as you pleased, there'd be more
the next time. They robbed the mules. So Mr.
Lewis says one day, -he's the inside foreman; we
call the superintendent you saw the outside foreman;
lMr. Lewis manages all the work in the mines, - he
says one day,'Boys,' he says,' I'11 give any one of
you a quarter, look, that will bring me a cat to-morrow.'
So the next morning I puts a cat in a basket and
ties the cover on, and comes down with her to see the
fun when we let her out. At first she did n't know




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.       1-59
what to make of the strange place. But all at once
she smells a rat, and gives a pounce, and comes out
from under a manger growling and scuffling with a
monstrous big rat in her mouth. Some other boys
brought cats, and I bet the rats suffered! Now the
cats are as much at home here as ever you saw cats
anywhere. They seem to like the mines. They come
purring and rubbing themselves around the miners,'who always give'em bits of their dinner. But the
rats have just about disappeared."
Lawrence noticed that the mangers were covered
with sheet-iron, which had been put on, Owen said,
to prevent, not the rats, but the mules themselves,
from gnawing the wood. " They'd eat the mangers
all up in a little while, if we did n't sheathe'em.
Look at this prop."
It was an oaken post as thick as Owen's body; and
it had been so nearly gnawed in two, that a smart
push with the hand might have broken it quite off.
Several other props were in almost as bad a condition." I advise your foreman to have these props ironed,"
said Mr. Clarence. "If he don't, some of your uneasy mules will be playing the part of blind Samson,
and pulling your house down."
Lawrence asked whether the stables were intended
merely as a dining-hall for the mules, or whether
they were kept in them over night.
"We stable them here all winter," said Owen.
"The hostler comes down and'feeds'em. The blacksmith comes down and shoes'em. The doctor comes




160         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
down and doctors'em, if they are sick. But in summer we stable'em outside. They are going out now,"
said Owen, leading the way back to the gangway.
A train of mules was passing, with boys on their
backs, stooping on the animals' necks as they passed
under low portions of the roof.  Other boys - doorkeepers or slate-pickers - were following on foot,
calling out, "Wait and give me a ride!" "Take me
on, after you get outside!" with other like hopeful
phrases, all aiming to establish comfortable relations
between the mules' backs and the legs of the pursuing boys.
Owen described the characters of some of the mules
as they passed. " That one with the muzzle on bites.
That other one kicks- look out!  That last kicked
up and threw three boys over his head the other day;
he thought two on his back was enough."
" How many mules are there? "
"Twenty, besides them that belong to the watercars."
" Now my young friend will want to know what
water-cars are for," said Mr. Clarence, bringing Muff
away in his arms.
Owen soon had an opportunity of showing. They
came to what he called a "basin," where the coal-bed
lay lower than the foot of the shaft and the main
gangways. It was like a hollow between hills, in
which a pond of water settles, too low to be drained
off. Here some men and boys were at work bailing.
They dipped up the water into cars having tank-like




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.       161
boxes, which, when filled, were drawn up to the top
of the hill," as Owen said, — properly enough, though
it sounded oddly to Lawrence to hear him talk of a
hill two hundred and fifty feet below the surface
of the ground.  The water was there emptied out,
where it would run down the other slope of the gangway towards the shaft.
"Drainage," observed Mr. Clarence, "is of quite as
much importance in coal-mining as ventilation. If
it was n't for that, all these drifts and chambers would
soon be full of water. I wish I had time, and I'd
show you my uncle's beautiful system!"  He felt in
his pocket for the piece of chalk, at the same time
casting wistful glances at Owen's inviting trouserslegs. But it was getting too late for demonstrations
on the blackboard.
"Mr. Lewis is going to rig a little steam pump, and
force the water up the hill," said Owen.  "He'11
bring the steam all the way from the engine-room
in pipes, and run a little bit of an engine down here,
that will save the labor of four men and four mules,
day and night."
"But we are a long way from the shaft, are n't
we?" said Lawrence, who thought, by the distance
they had travelled, they must be at least a mile
from it.
" Only about six hundred feet," said Owen. "The
gangways make a circuit. We have been coming
round towards the point we started from. Now you
shall go up into the Diamond Vein, and see how
K




162         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
Mr. Lewis is managing to drain the low part of
that."
" ow do we get into it? " Lawrence asked, remembering that it was thirty feet above their heads.
Owen answered by leading the way to a low, narrow passage, which sloped up from the gangway and the
lower coal-seam into strata of clear slate. This, Owen
said, was a tunnel which Mr. Lewis had lately had
constructed, as an avenue of communication between
the two coal-beds. It started from what he called
the top of the hill, in the lower bed, and went: across,
by a gentle ascent, to the bottom of the corresponding
hill in the upper bed. To explain this, Owen had to
stop and chalk out a diagram on a slab of slate; by
which means he succeeded in conveying the idea
quite clearly, although, when he came to write in
words to indicate the places of the tunnel, and the
-Diamond and Rock Veins, he showed himself somewhat less familiar with the spelling-book than with
the mines.




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.        163
" Look here," said Mr. Clarence, examining the jagged walls of the tunnel, which were pure argillaceous
slate (or slate that had once been clay), beneath the
Diamond Vein. "You can see the broken ends of
fossil roots."
"The slate here was full of such," said Owen.
"Sometimes great big roots — only not roots, look,
but stone - would come out, all perfect."
Lawrence had thought that he already understood
how the forests which made the coal-beds had their
roots in underlying beds of clay; but now the fact
became as it were a visible reality to him, and he was
for a moment lost in wonder at Nature's vast and
mysterious operations. " How long ago," thought he,
"these immense forests must have been growing and
decaying!  How useless they must have seemed,
if there had been anybody on the earth then to think
about them! And now, after ages and ages, here they
are in great, thick layers of coal, for the use of man,
at a time when he needs it, and could n't, as I see, do
without it." Lawrence was not a particularly pious
boy, but somehow a deep still sense of Infinite Love
and Wisdom, - a Divine Providence, - forming and
governing the world, stole over him, like a shadow of
invisible wings.
He inquired if the coal of the two veins was of
precisely the same quality.  Owen said not quite,
though they were both first-rate white-ash veins.
Mr. Clarence said that the coal of no two beds anywhere was precisely the same, -- though anthracite




164         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
did n't show, by any means, such decided differences
as the soft kinds did.  "Some anthracite is very
gassy, and some makes clinkers, or is full of slate
and bone; while some burns without throwing off
much gas, and leaves little besides ashes in the
grate."
Then Lawrence wished to know the difference between white and red ash coal; and Mr. Clarence
replied that red-ash was simply anthracite containing
a small percentage of oxide of iron, or iron rust, which
gave to its ashes their peculiar color. He went on to
discourse in a quite learned way about the widely
different varieties of bituminous coal, —how some
would melt and run together, or "cake," in the fire;
how some, containing perhaps quite as much bitumen,
would not "cake," and were consequently considered
more valuable for most purposes; how one sort
yielded the largest amount of coal-oil, and another
the largest amount of illuminating gas; how cannelcoal was probably so named because it burned with
such a beautiful, clear flame, like a c.andle, or cannel,
- as the word is pronounced in the Lancashire dialect, in England, and so forth, - the young gentleman
talking loudly amidst the noise of a torrent that
poured down through the tunnel from the upper coalvein.
"It was mostly for the water that Mr. Lewis had
this tunnel cut through," said Owen, as soon as he
could get a chance to slip in a word. "When he first
took charge of the mines, a few years ago, he found




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.      165
twenty-six men bailing water, up in this Diamond
Vein, like those you saw below. The first thing he
said was,'Stop spending so much money that way.'
Of course he knew the chambers would fill with
water; but he said,'Let'em fill.' He just stopped
work in'em, and blew out the tunnel, look; and now
he is driving a new gangway around behind the
chambers, to tap'em."
Into this new gangway Owen conducted his friends,
after having shown them the old gangway and the
chambers filled with water.
They had not proceeded far when they saw a lamp
moving through the darkness before them.
"There's Mr. Lewis himself!"  cried  Owen.
"Quick! and you'll see him tap a chamber."
Eager to know what tapping a chamber was, Lawrence hurried on with Mr. Clarence after their guide,
and soon came up with the "inside foreman," just as
he was entering a short new chamber which had
been driven up from the new gangway so as to strike
the end of one of the old chambers.
They found him to be a plain, sensible, pleasant
Welshman; and he took a good deal of pains to explain to them what he was going to do.
"The old chambers, understand, are full of water.
They pitch towards the bottom of the basin; and as
soon as we stopped bailing they filled. Now I come
directly'to the bottom of the basin with the tunnel,
and work this new gangway around by the lower end
of the drowned chambers. Before, the water had to




166         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
be drawn in cars up one slope, and poured down
another; but now I make it travel with its own legs,
down through the tunnel and the Rock Vein, direct
to the shaft. That saves the work of many men and
mules. You see this plug."
The boys saw it, —a large round stick of wood,
driven near the bottom of the wall of coal, at the end
of the new chamber.
" It stops a hole that has been drilled through into
one of the drowned chambers.  It would n't do,
understand, to break through and let all the water
out at once; it would flood everything. So we drill
holes, and plug'em, and then draw off the water by
degrees. Now I unplug this. In a day or two I unplug another; and so on, till we get rid of all the
water, without giving the pump at the shaft too much
to do at once. Step back, or you'll be spattered."
So saying, he loosened the plug with his foot, and
pulled it out. It was followed by a jet of water, the
gushing force of which indicated the powerful pressure on the other side. It shot -out horizontally from
the aperture, fell in a gentle curve, and, plashing into
a channel cut for it, added its tribute to the torrent
pouring down through the tunnel.
Returning from the Diamond Vein, Lawrence asked
why they could not go up by one of the shaft-cars,
which Owen had said stopped there.
"Because the cars have done running by this time,"
replied the little Welshman.
"Then how are we to get out of the mines, if we
can't go up the shaft? 




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.        167
TAPPING A CHAMBER.
I'11 show you," said Owen, mysteriously.
Lawrence reflected that there -must be a way out
for the mules, besides the shaft, and said nothing.
They were in the Rock Vein again, passing an aircourse, when Owen stopped.
"Here was a man killed the other day," said he.
"'There was fire-damp here; and he went in with his
lamp;"




168          AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
"Fire-damp," said Mr. Clarence, anticipating Lawrence's question, "is what men of science" ("like
myself," his manner seemed to say) "call light caiburetted hydrogen; it is a gas composed of one part
carbon and two parts hydrogen. The fissures of the
coal formation are full of it. It shoots out of what
we call blowers. It is much more plentiful and dangerous in the soft-coal mines than it is here; but one
has to be careful about it here."
"Every mine has a fire-boss," said Owen. "He
goes around every morning with a safety-lamp, and
tests all the places where the fire-damp is likely to
be. If he finds it safe to go in, he marks on the
pillar with chalk.  Here's one of his marks, now."
"The safety-lamp" - Mr. Clarence took Lawrence's
lamp in his hand to illustrate —"is constructed on
the principle that flame will not pass through very
small holes. It is simply a lamp surrounded by a
fine wire gauze. This the gas-inspector, as we call
him,- or fire-boss, as Owen calls *him,- carries
through the mines, holding it up under the roof where
the fire-damp, which is lighter than common air, is
always to be found, if anywhere. It goes to the top
of the mines, just as water goes to the bottom, and
stands in inverted puddles, where it can't flow away.
It is invisible, of course, till you light it. If the
safety-lamp passes through it, it takes fire inside of
the wire; sometimes it puts the lamp out, and burns
with a curious flame by itself, floating in the top of
the gauze covering. The gas that gets in will burn,




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.        169
but the burning gas can't get out; it is caged. Some
mines, especially some British coal-mines, are so gassy
that the miners have to use safety-lamps altogether,
and protect themselves still further, by very ingenious
arrangements, against other deadly gases that fall to
the bottom of the chambers."
"Our men wor't work where there's fire-damp,"
said Owen. "They're afraid of it as they are of
lightning. When they find it, they beat it down from
the roof with old coats, or bags; then the air-current
carries it off."
"I should like to see some of it burn," said Lawrence.
" That's what a man said the other day. My father
knew where there was just about a hatful of it in a
little hollow of the roof, in an old air-course. So he
says,' You take the lamp, and put it up there, and
you'll find some.' So the man went feeling along
with the lamp, till, the first thing he knew, the whole
air before his eyes burst into a blaze; it knocked
him down, and skinned his nose for him."
"A little hatful of gas expands like that!" cried
Lawrence.
"That's the danger," said Owen. "Suppose there is
a foot of fire-damp up there now. You shall put up
your lamp, look! It catches, and you shall multiply
it by seven; it makes seven foot of solid blaze, look! "
"In the Mount Pleasant Mine, over here," Owen
went on, "there was lately a terrible explosion.  One
morning the miners would n't wait for the fire-boss,
8




170         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
and they went into a drift where there was gas.
Eleven boys and eleven mules got killed. The firedamp blowed'em out of the drift, just like it had been
a keg of powder. Then the air rushing back blowed'em in again. They were all torn to pieces, so you
could n't tell one from another."
" Accidents are the constant dread of miners' famnilies," said Mr. Clarence.
"Just along here," said Owen, as they travelled on,
"a boy got hurted the other day. He fell under a
car. I was outside at the time. As soon as it got
out that there had been an accident, you should have
seen! The way the women and children came running to the shaft was something pitiful. There was
hundreds there in a few minutes, wringing their hands,
asking questions, -'Who is it? who is it?' for every
one thought it might be her own husband, or son, or
father, till the boy was brought out."
"Was he badly hurt?"
"He died in a few days. He wag a poor woman's
only son. Mr. Lewis got up a subscription for her,
and every miner gave something. It was very sad,"
said Owen, his voice choking a little. " Though sometimes there's a funny accident, look!" he added,
making haste to be cheerful again. "At the Mount
Pleasant Mine they have a slope twelve hundred feet
long. An engine draws up the cars out of the mines
by a rope. The other day a boy wanted to go down
and carry his father's dinner. He pushed off a car,
and got into it; but he forgot to hook the rope to




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.       171
it first. The car went like lightning, after it got
well started, run off the track, and smashed all to bits.
But the boy was n't hurted scarcely any. When the
men picked him up all he said was, - he stuttered a
little, look, -' The engineer 1-1-let me down too
f-f-fast!'"
"Look here, young man," said Mr. Clarence. " Your
lamps are almost out."
" So are we," said Owen. " Here's the mules' gangway. This is a new thing, too. Mr. Lewis had it
cut through, because he thought if the shaft should
get afire, the men would all perish, if they did n't
have some way to get out. Then it helps ventilation,
and is handy for the mules. Before this was cut,
every mule had to be brought down the shaft; and
there was always danger of the colts breaking loose
and jumping out of the cars."
Lawrence's lamp was burning so low that now the
cutrrent of fresh air rushing down the gangway blew
it out. The oil was getting low in Owen's lamp too;
it scarcely lighted their way.
"What if we had lost our lights somewhere away
off in the mines? " said Lawrence.
"I did so once," said Owen. "I was on my way
to the shaft, to take the last car up. I came to some
water so deep I did n't like to walk through it. So I
got some stones and threw in, to step on. As I was
throwing the last one, I gave my head a toss, look!
and off went my lamp into the water. The mines
were full of rats, and I was scared. I thought I might




172         AMONG THE COAL-MINERS.
have to spend the night with'em; and I knew they
were hungry enough to eat me. I began to travel. I
did n't mind stepping into the water then. I shouted,
but could n't make anybody hear. I thought the last
men must be going up the shaft by that time; and of
course they would n't think to ask for me. That was
before this gangway was cut through. I felt my way,
and got along as fast as I could. All to once I saw a
light. It was Mr. Lewis; he was around, looking
after things, as he always is. So I went out with
him, and bid good night to the rats."
"How cool the fresh air is!" said Lawrence. " I
had n't thought of the mines being so warm. We
shall see daylight soon."
"No, you won't," said Owen, -" though -you may
see starlight."
He was right. The in-rushing draught of air grew
colder and colder, as they went up through the muletrampled mud of the low, narrow, ascending gangway;
and at last a faint light shone in at the entrance, which
reminded Lawrence of the light Sindbad the Sailor
saw at the end of his cavern. But it was not the
light of day. The sun had gone down, and evening
had come on, since they entered the mines.
They emerged from the low-roofed passage,- which
was supported by a cribbing of timber, beyond the
natural roof of rock, —and came out in the shadow
of a bleak hillside. There was a noise of murmuring
waters, - a dark river rushed by at their feet. Lights
twinkled in the city beyond, and above them the stars
shone.




CURIOSITIES OF THE MINES.       173
"Here's the Lackawanna. VWe have come out on
its banks," said Owen. " The colliery building, where
you went into the shaft, is away up on the hill yonder."
"I can't tell you how much obliged I am to you,
O.wen!" said Lawrence.  "If you ever come to
Massachusetts, I'11 try and do as much for you. In
the mean time, I want to give you something to
remember me by.  I have n't anything but this
pocket-knife; it's small, but there's first-rate stuff
in the blades."
"I shall not take that from you!" said Owen; yet
his hand opened involuntarily as the knife approached
it, and closed again very quickly the moment it touched
his palm,- for Owen was but a boy, and it. was not
in boy-nature to refuse such a gift.
"Now I wish I could see the superintendent and
thank him," said Lawrence.
But Owen said it was too late to find him at the
office. Then Lawrence remembered his uncle, who
he feared might be growing anxious about him; and
Mr. Clarence said they ought to be on their way back
to the hotel. So Owen piloted them up the hill to
the track of the street-cars, where they took leave of
him, as if they three had been old friends, — Mr.
Clarence also slipping something into the willing
Welsh palm.
A street-car came along, and stopped for them; and
Lawrence, getting into it, with Mr. Clarence and Muff,
rode back to the hotel, where the two boys found their
respective uncles, just returned, stepping out of the
buggy at the door.




174          AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
CHAPTER V.
AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
I.
LETTER-WRITING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
NWXTHAT's the programme for this evening?"
VV ~said Mr. Clarence, as he entered the readingroom of the hotel with his new friend after supper.
With his cane under his arm, and a toothpick in
his mouth, and his hat tipped gayly upon one side of
his head, he was looking quite fresh and spirited,
after the day's adventures. So, too, was Lawrence,
though his manner was by no means so light and airy
as that of his vivacious friend. No one, to have seen
them after their thorough washing and brushing and
refreshment, would have suspected that they had so
lately come out of a coal-mine.
"I think," said Lawrence, "I'11 write a letter to
my little coz, and tell her about the mines and the
miners, and how I made your acquaintance."
"Capital!" said Mr. Clarence. "And I believe I'11
write to my little coz, and tell her about you."
So the young gentlemen got some note-paper and
pens, and seated themselves at the table, the showy
Mr. Clarence on one side and the more solid-looking
Lawrence opposite him, with a very large inkstand




LETTER-WRITING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.   175
between them. They shoved the newspapers aside,
dipped their pens (Mr. Clarence said it was like dipping into a well), and then dated their letters.
" Scranton, October," wrote Mr. Clarence, with a
characteristic flourish, and then stopped. "What's
the day of the month?"
Lawrence told him, and in his turn inquired
whether Pennsylvanians wrote the abbreviation of
the name of their State Penn. or Pa.
" We write it both ways; it is the same thing,"
said Mr. Clarence; adding, with a comical smile,
"Penn was the Pa of this State, you know; and
that's the reason of it, I suppose."
" You made me laugh, and joggled me," said Lawrence, throwing aside the sheet he had begun on, and
taking another.
Mr. Clarence began to flourish again, but stayed his
hand before touching pen to paper.
"I never wrote to my little coz in my life. How
do you start off?"
" My dear little Cousin Ethel, - that's my style,"
said Lawrence, writing.
"Tip-top! You are my Complete Letter-Writer.
My - dear- little — Cousin - -Eth-  No! hold on!
My cousin's name is Jessie. Now I shall have to
take a new sheet.  My dear little Cousin Jessie,that's all right; a fine opening, as the miners say.
Now which way do you carry your drift? In other
words, what next?"
Lawrence scratched his ear and looked solemnly at




176           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
the great inkstand. Mr. Clarence looked cheerfully
at Lawrence. Then Lawrence read over the first line
of his letter,- My dear little Cousin Ethel, -.My dear
little Cousin Ethel," - three or four times, - something like a fisherman trolling his line for a bite, hoping that an idea would rise and hook itself on at the
end of it. He could think of things enough to write,
but could n't get hold of just the right thing first. It
may be added that the consciousness of his friend's
eyes upon him did not help him much.
"I've a plan!" said Mr. Clarence at last. "We'11
both write the same things to our dear little cousins.
You think of a sentence, and we'11 both write it;
then I'11 think of one, and give you the benefit.
Division of labor, you know."
"Well, you think of a sentence first."
"How's this?  My dear little, and so forth: I
have to-day made the acquaintance of a s2plendid young
fellow, - which means you."
"But when I write it't will mean you," said Lawrence, laughing.
" In that way we shall make an even thing of the
compliments. I don't object to being called a splendid young fellow; do you? Have you got it down? "
"I've written it capital fellow, - did you say
splendid? "
"Never mind. Don't change it. Only underline
capital, so as to make it even. What's your sentence?"
"His pleasant face is before me while I write," suggested Lawrence.




LETTER-WRITING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.   177
"Excellent! Don't you see how  admirably it
works? Only - will a slight amendment be in
order?"
" Certainly."
" Then permit me to suggest that we might employ
a rather stronger epithet than pleasant face; might
n't we? Suppose we make it handsome face? Can
you conscientiously?"
Lawrence thought he could, but laughed so that he
did not trust his hand to write for about a minute.
Then he noticed that he had already written pleasant.
"Never mind, make it pleasant and handsome; I
think I can stand it," said Mr. Clarence. "He is here
in company with his uncle, the distinguished -   Here.
write in the names of our respective uncles. Now
it's your turn again."
"And while his uncle and mine are talking of the
business that brought them here, in the corner —" Lawrence went on.
" Brought them here in the corner? " queried Mr.
Clarence. " That don't sound just right."
"I mean, while they are talking in the corner
about the business that-   But it's a bad sentence, any way. I'm afraid I never can write a
decent letter in this way."
"Yes, you can. Push ahead! Don't you know
the secret of fluent composition?  It's this:never
stop to thihk. If you stop to think, you're lost."
Just then the little dog Muff jumped up on the
table, and scrambling over the newspapers, stretched
8*                       L




178           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
his chin out on his fore-paws between the two friends,
with his nose near the inkstand.
"I never can go on with that wagging tail before
my eyes!" said Lawrence.
"In other words, you think our letter-writing will
be curtailed," said Mr. Clarence.
"I think Muff will be responsible for the final
paws we have come to," replied Lawrence, - for that
is the way with young fellows: if one makes a pun
his companion is sure to feel called upon to match it,
if not with a fresh one, then with one not quite so
fresh.
"Here, Muff! hold our pens while we scratch our
heads for ideas," said Mr. Clarence.
The dog took the pens by the handles, and held
them with all the gravity of a lord chancellor, while
the two letter-writers scratched industriously for the
ideas that did not come. Soon Lawrence leaned his
head on the table, pillowing it on his arms. The
truth is, he was tired and sleepy.   Mr. Clarence
followed his example; and there they sat, or rather
lay, head to head, with their elbows squared at each
other and with the inkstand and the lord chancellor between them. In three minutes they were fast
asleep.
At the end of about an hour Lawrence lifted his
head with remarkable suddenness, opened his eyes
very wide, and looked wildly about him. Mr. Clarence, with his head still down, and with cataracts of
hair over his arms, was gently snoring. There was




LETTER-WRITING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.    179
nobody else in the room, except the lord chancellor,
and he, too, had fallen into a snooze, with his muzzle
on his paws, and with the pens beside it on the table.
"Hello!" said Lawrence.
"Hello!" said Mr. Clarence, starting up and tossing back the cascade of hair from his face, wide awake
in an instant.
"I thought I was chasing rats in a coal-mine, and
had got my face in a mule's manger, and could n't
get it out," said Lawrence, feeling his neck, which
had suffered.
"I didn't imagine you were asleep!" said Mr.
Clarence.  "I was n't; I've been thinking what to
write."
" You were snoring, any way."
" 0 no! I make that noise in my head sometimes
when I am thinking pretty hard. It's the rumbling
of the mill, you know." And the miller arranged his
tangled hair. He was one of those persons who can
never be convinced that they have slept on irregular
occasions; and Lawrence let the matter pass with a
laugh.
" It's after nine; you have been thinking over an
hour. Where are our uncles?"
"Oh! they? They have walked out," said Mr.
Clarence, glancing about the room. "This seems to
be letter-writing under difficulties. Let's walk out
too. I am as much refreshed as if I had had a nap.
Come, Muff!" taking the lord chancellor under his
arm. "He's a dog of steady habits. Goes to bed




180          AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
early. The porter will take care of him while we go
in search of adventures."
Muff having been disposed of, the young gentlemen
walked out of the hotel arm in arm. It was a still,
moonlight evening. The streets were almost deserted.
Mr. Clarence looked up at the'sky with a sentimental
air, and said, pensively,"Behold the moon! how she spreads her silver
mantle over the silent world! Did you ever think
of it? She has shone upon the earth just so thousands of nights before, and where were you and I?
She will shine just so again, a year from now, - ten
years from now,- a hundred years from now, - and
where will you and I be? O moon! I pause for a
reply," added Mr. Clarence, theatrically.
He did not pause a great while, however (the moon
evidently having no intention whatever of replying),
but said presently, -
" I'11 tell you where let's go! To the iron-works!
-to see the blast-furnaces by night!"
II.
THE BLAST-FURNACES BY NIGHT.
LAWRENCE eagerly accepted the suggestion.  They
walked briskly up the street, and soon came in sight
of the flaming furnace throats, and of the black
figures of workmen passing to and fro before them.
The furnaces of the Lackawanna Iron-Works are




THE BLAST-FURNACES BY NIGHT.       181
built on the side of the steep right bank of Roaring
Brook.  They are large and tall; their immense
foundations are laid in the foot of the bank, while
their throats roar and flame over its summit fifty feet
above. It was at that elevation, on a sort of high,
dim platform, that the lads saw the human figures
defined against the glow of the fires.
"They're feeding the furnaces up there," said Mr.
Clarence.
The boys found a cart-track which took them up a
short slope to an open shed, covering great piles of
what appeared to be stones and rocks and anthracite
coal. A gang of laborers were at work shovelling up
these materials and wheeling them off in small iron
carriages. The rocks in some of the piles were in
rough blocks, just as they came from the-quarries;
but in others they seemed to have been broken up
into sizes suitable for making macadamized roads. It
was from these latter piles, and from the piles of coal,
that the carriages were filling; and the lads, watching
the men, saw that they wheeled their loads directly
into the glare of the furnace throats, which lighted
up the scene.
"This is certainly stone!" said Lawrence, picking
up a fragment from a pile where a man was shovelling.
" Sure it is," said the man, -" limestone."
"What do you do with it?"
"Cast it in with the charge."
"What is the charge?"
"Go with that carriage, and you will see.'"




182          AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
Another laborer coming with an empty carriage
left it, and, taking the one the shovellers had just
filled, wheeled it out across the platform. The lads
followed, advancing into the terrible heat and glare
of the furnace throats.
The furnaces were four in number; but only their
tops were here visible, - huge, funnel-shaped necks,
somewhat higher than a man's head, ranged along
the edge of the platform, above the roof of the castinghouse which enclosed the bodies of the furnaces below.
There were iron doors in the sides of the funnels; into
these the contents of the carriages were cast; and
through these, as also through the circular openings
in the funnel-tops, roared the flames, as if spouted
from nose and mouth by so many young volcanoes.
Lawrence was at first almost terrified at the position in which he found himself. He looked down
into the fiery gulf into which the man dumped his
load with a loud clang of the iron carriage striking
the iron plates. There the furnace enlarged like a
yawning crater below its comparatively narrow throat.
At first he could see only an abyss of many-colored,
dazzlingly beautiful flames; but presently he could
distinguish, heaped high in the midst of them, and.
only a few feet lower than the charging-plates on
which he stood, the top of a dark mound. It was
composed of the freshly dumped materials from the
piles under the shed. Around and over them, and
through every chink between the lumps, the flames
swept and darted and surged.




THE BLAST-FURNACES BY NIGHT.                                              183
coI'
Il~~~~l'illll~~~~~~~~~lllllllllllllJ~i~'liiiiiiill,~i'it    //' fi?~~~ ~~j~i!?




184           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
Another laborer came, and dumped a carriage-load
of coal -great lumps of anthracite -into the throat.
Then a third came with a load of what seemed another kind of stone. Then the door was closed.
"But this is n't stone!" cried Lawrence, seizing a
lump, and retreating with it from the intolerable glare
of the fire. " This must be the ore."
"Ore it certainly is," said Mr. Clarence. "Ore,
limestone, coal, -they all go into the furnace together, as you see."
"How, then, is the iron ever separated from the
earthy matters?" said Lawrence, puzzled and astonished.' "I should think it would be full of ashes and
dirt. And what is the use of the limestone?"
"Perhaps we can find some person who will tell
us," said Mr. Clarence. "But look here!"
They had retreated to the edge of the platform.
They were on a spot which overlooked the roofs of
buildings below, and the firelit waters of Roaring
Brook pouring over a high dam, in a beautiful cascade, and rushing along their rocky bed under steep
ledges, in light and shadow, at the base of the hill.
Surrounding this bright flame-picture was the still,
moonlit night, silvering peacefully the country and
the town. Lawrence thought he had never looked
upon so strikingly wild and picturesque a scene, and
he stood gazing at it wonderingly until Mr. Clarenice
pulled him away.
"Ask one of these men about the limestone," said
Mr. Clarence, as they returned to the shovellers at




THE BLAST-FURNACES BY NIGHT.       185
one of the piles. And he himself put the question in
his polite way.
"The loimestone?" said the man, staring at him.
"Why, we could n't do onything, mon, but for the
loimestone."
"But what's the use of it?"
" The use of it? The use, when we could n't get a
blast without it! It's loike ahsking the use of the
air ye breathe."
" I know something of the use of the air we breathe:
it gives oxygen to the blood," said Lawrence. "Now
what does the limestone do to the furnace? "
" Mayhap it gives what ye call oxengin to the furnace loike," said the man, grinning with his hard face
over his short stump of a pipe; and he returned
to his shovelling with the air of one who had rendered a reason.
"I can tell you what you want to know," said
another laborer, leaning on his shovel.  "The limestone physics the furnace." But that was hardly a
satisfactory explanation.
Another said, " The lime helps the flow of the iron."
A fourth said, "It makes the flux."
" No doubt, my friends," said Mr. Clarence. "But
there's more in it than all that. We'11 find out by
and by. Let's take a look at the boilers."
There were twenty of these, and they were ranged
in order over an extensive fie-chamber, a door of
which was opened by a good-natured attendant, that
the visitors might look in. No fuel was visible, but




186           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
billows of flame filled the space, undulating far away
out of sight, under the boilers, which they enveloped.
"Where do the flames come from?" Lawrence
asked, surprised at the beautiful display.
" From the furnaces," said the man.  "They are a
part of the waste heat."
"Then it don't all come out of the furnace throats?"
"Only a little of it. Below the throats are flues,
which you can't see.  There are pipes from the flues
that bring some of the heat here. The rest of it goes
to the hot-blast ovens."
"What are those?"
"The chambers where the cold air is heated before
it is driven into the furnaces.  It wouldn't do to
drive in such a quantity of air cold."
" It would cool the furnaces," suggested Lawrence.
"Besides," added Mr. Clarence, "cold air don't
burn like hot air. Hot air strikes the gases, and
makes instantaneous combustion. But cold air has
to get partly heated before it burns much; and they
could n't begin to get so intense a heat with it."
"But I don't understand yet the use of the boilers,"
said Lawrence.
"Why," said Mr. Clarence, "the boilers drive the
engines, that drive the fan, that drives the air, that
drives the fires and makes the blast. They are blastfurnaces, you know."
"Where they make flint-glass," replied Lawrence,
"they have tall chimneys, by which they get draught
enough without any such apparatus."




THE BLAST-FURNACES BY NIGHT.      187
He had no idea of the power of the blast until he
went to look at the engines. There were four, of one
thousand horse-power each. The immense fly-wheels
("They regulate the motion of the machinery, you
know," said Mr. Clarence) almost completely filled the
space between the floor and the roof of the building.
The weight of the largest of them, the engineer said,
was forty thousand pounds. The silence and swiftness of these huge, whirling wheels was something
wonderful. "And is n't it curious to think of that
quiet man with the newspaper being the master of all
this tremendous machinery?" said Lawrence.
"Yes; man is little, but he is the trump-card on
this planet," replied Mr. Clarence.
The air was forced by the engines through huge
iron pipes,- "blowing cylinders," the engineer called
them, - and such was the power of the blast that
it entered the furnaces under a pressure of eight or
nine pounds to the square inch.
" Think of a tall chimney making a draught equal
to that!" said Mr. Clarence.  "A  chimney would
have to be powerful enough to lift itself up by the
straps of its boots! Iron is n't glass; and you see the
smelting furnace has to be constructed on an entirely
different principle. Now let's go down to the castinghouse."




188           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
III.
THE CASTING-HOUSE.
HALF-WAY down the hillside, they passed -a large
reservoir of water, its still surface lit up like a little
lake, by the furnace fires above. Farther on they
descended a steep flight of steps to the roadway
between the base of the hill and Roaring Brook.
Along this road was laid an iron track for cars, leading into the casting-house.
This was a spacious, high-raftered, depot-like building, open on the side of the brook. On the other side
were massive piers of masonry supporting the great
furnaces. In the shadowy background could be seen
the iron pipes that brought down the hot-air blast.
In front of each furnace was an enclosed space filled
with sand, — something like the arena of a circus,
except that it was divided into two "floors" by a
passage-way running down the centre. One of the
floors in each arena appeared to be ready for casting,
being laid out in regular, smooth channels, as if careful impressions of a gigantic gridiron had been taken
in the deep, fine sand. The other floors were either
in a tumbled condition, just as the iron of the last
casting, when taken up, had left them, or laborers
were engaged in laying down in them the wooden
patterns by which the gridiron impressions were made.
The sand was shovelled upon these, and packed about
them; and it seemed to be just moist enough to




THE CASTING-HOUSE.           189
retain the mould, in clean, handsome shape, after they
were removed.
"Those are the pig-beds," said Mr. Clarence. "Of
course you have heard of iron pigs! Well, this is
where they are littered. Here are, in each of these
floors, eight or ten pig-beds. To each bed there is
what they call a sow. That's the main channel that
runs across the floor.  You'll see presently how that
nourishes the pigs," - for Mr. Clarence saw by the
signs that the men were preparing to cast.
A gang of a dozen or more were lounging about the
hearth of one of the furnaces, leaning on iron bars, or
sitting on benches, as if waiting for something. The
boys went up where they were, and asked how long
before they were going to cast.
" In a few minutes," said one. " We are just waiting for the fellers to come down with the word from
up above. You'd better keep back on the far side.
You'11 see better there, and be out of danger."
The boys accordingly withdrew to the foot of the
arena, on the side of the brook, - Mr. Clarence smiling at the idea of danger, but saying, airily, " We shall
be out of the way, though."
They turned to look at the brook; and Lawrence
noticed that there were cavernous openings in the
steep ledges opposite, into which the waters rushed.
"Those are old coal-openings," said Mr. Clarence;
"for here was a good coal-mine once. But it got on
fire, and burnt I don't know how long, till they turned
the brook into it and put it out."




190           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
The " fellers " had now come down from "up above ";
and there were forty or fifty men in the casting-house.
Then one who had been leaning on an iron bar grasped
it with both hands, and began to drive it with sharp
clicks against the hearth of the first furnace.
"He is drilling out the clay that stops the iron,"
said Mr. Clarence. "You'll see it spirt soon!"
Just then a furious roaring sound filled the building.
"That is the blast; it is let off from the furnace
when they cast."
At the same time sparks began to fly, and dazzling
spatters of molten metal followed each stroke of the
drill.
"It's coming now!" cried Mr. Clarence, while
Lawrence stood thrilled with expectation.
At the word out gushed the terrible molten torrent.
The men were active and alert about it in an instant,
shouting and springing to and fro, eager to guide and
control the fearful flood. Some threw shovelfuls of
sand upon it, to check its too rapid rush, while it
poured down a channel prepared for it and began to
fill the pig-beds in the upper part of the floor. It
filled the mould of the " sow " first, then flowed down
into the pigs, filling one after the other as it crept
along. As soon as one pig-bed was filled, gates of
clay, called " shutters," placed across the channel leading to it, were suddenly driven down by men with
heavy sledge-hammers, and the fiery stream was
turned into the next sow below. There was just
slope enough to the floor to give a sufficient fall to




THE CASTING-HOUSE.          191
_ l S S~d~7
e   |                         a~




192           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
the running metal. Sand, as I have said, was thrown
upon it, and the gates were driven down when it came
too fast; and when it moved too sluggishly in any
direction it was helped along by means of long, thin
strips of wood or slender poles, which the men drew
before it, very much as a child encourages a stream
of water-drops by leading it with his finger. The
poles were often on fire, and were as often quenched
in the moist sand.
So floor after floor was cast, three of the furnaces
being tapped in quick succession. The streams of
molten metal lighting up the night, the sparks flying
off from them and shooting hither and thither in. little explosive showers, the flaming poles, the heat, the
glare, the deafening roar of the blast, the animation
of the workmen, their swift movements and loud cries,
and finally the floors covered with enormous redhot gridirons, and the sight of men walking quickly
but unconcernedly over them, - all combined to
make up a scene of the most vivid interest to the
mind of Lawrence.
As soon as a floor was cast, sand was shovelled all
over the beds of glowing metal; then water from a
hose-pipe was thrown on copiously, filling the air
with clouds of steam. Then men, stripped for the
work,- naked to their waists, with clogs on their
feet,- went on to the floors with sledges and levers,
with which they broke up the iron while it was yet
soft, separating the pigs from the sows, and dividing
the sows into pig-shaped bars. (" Though I don't see




THE CASTING-HOUSE.           193
why they were ever called pigs," Lawrence wrote
afterwards to his little Cousin Ethel. "They don't
look at all like young porkers, but are just rough
pieces of cast-iron as big as my leg, and almost as
tall, when they are stood up, as I am.")
"I should think you would suffocate," Mr. Clarence
said to one of these men, who emerged from the stifling cloud and heat of one of the floors, and came out
for a breath of air where the boys stood.
"I am used to it. I shall put all that iron on cars
before midnight."
"How many pigs are there on that floor?"
"About three hundred. They weigh from a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five pounds apiece.
As soon as they cool a little, I begin to handle
them."
"Do you work all night?"
" No; my time is up when that job is done. There
are two sets of hands; when this set goes off another
conies on."
" How often do you cast?"
"Every six hours, day and night."
" How long after the ore is put in at the chargingdoors above before it comes out melted iron?" Mr.
Clarence inquired.
"Three days," said the man.
"And how much does one of those furnaces hold?"
"Six hundred tons of stock."
"That means coal, ore, and limestone, all together,"
said Mr. Clarence. "Six hundred tons, my lad!"
9                        Mr




194           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
and he tapped Lawrence on the shoulder with his
cane. "Can your glass-works beat that?"
"They are drawing off the iron again!" said Lawrence, seeing another stream of fiery liquid gushing
from the furnace.
"That's the cinder," said the man.  "It comes
from another opening higher up than the tappinghole for the iron."
"Let's go up and look at it," said Mr. Clarence.
They drew near and saw the dazzling stream pour
down, through a channel prepared for it, to a spout,
where it fell into a flaring pan as large as a cart-box,
which had been brought up on a car, along a branch
of the railway track, to receive it. When the pall was
nearly full, the flow was stopped, and the car, loaded
with the glowing mass, was drawn away by a mule.
Observing a person who seemed to be a sort of
overseer, Lawrence asked him what the cinder was,
and what it was good for.
" It is good for nothing. It is the slag."
" What is it made of?  Ashes, for one thing, I
suppose."
"' Yes; but the limestone makes a good part of it."
"Now," said Mr. Clarence, in his polite way, "I
see we have found an intelligent man; and perhaps he
will kindly inform ns what the limestone is used for."
" I can tell you a little. Do you know anything
about the construction of a blast-furnace? " and, the
boys confessing their ignorance, the speaker continued: "It is built up of fire-clay inside that solid




THE  CASTING-HOUSE.               195
stone-work, which is made very solid and strong, and
bolted together, as you see, in order to support such a
tremendous pressure. The furnace is shaped something like an egg standing on its big end.  It is fifty
feet high, from the hearth to the throat.  It is eighr &
a, throat; b, b, flues; c, c, boshes; d, d, tweers; e, e, flux f, f, iron in the
hearth.
teen feet broad in the boshes, — that is, through the
thickest part of the egg. The materials thrown in
have room to swell, as the heat expands them, and




196           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
they settle down into the larger part. The hearth is
the chamber, or reservoir, in the bottom of the furnace for receiving the melted metal and flux. Just
over the hearth are the tweers; step here, and I will
show you where the blast is driven in."
"Tweers! what a word! It must be from  the
French tyere, which means a pipe," observed MIr.
Clarence.
"Very likely, for it is a tapering aperture that
receives the blast from the ends of these pipes, and
carries it into the furnace. There are six of these
tweers; and it is through these we blow the fires."
And the man proceeded to explain the operation
going on within the furnace.
"Crude iron ore," said he, "is always more or less
oxidized; that is, it contains a quantity of oxygen.
It also contains a good deal of earthy matter. Now,
in the furnace, the ore soon begins to soften, and to
part with its oxygen, which unites with the carbon
of the coal, and with the oxygen of the air-blast helps
make the fire.  At the same time the ore absorbs
carbon from the coal, which gives it the quality of
cast-iron. The ore does not actually melt until it
almost reaches the hearth. It is in a sort of pasty
condition, when it comes within the direct influence
of the blast; then it flows at once. The limestone
begins to flow first, and it helps the flow of the iron.
Then the iron, being the heaviest of all the materials
in the furnace, goes to the bottom of the hearth, and
everything else floats on top of it."




THE CASTING-HOUSE.           197
"I see now how it is separated from the ashes and
other materials! " cried Lawrence. "It is by its own
weight."
" That is it. But there is another thing; we have
n't got through with the limestone s et.  The melted
lime makes the flux, which acts like a filter to the
iron. The metal is at the bottom, and the flux floats
on top of it, like oil upon water. Now every particle
of iron that melts and comes down has to pass through
this flux. If you could look in, you would see the
melted metal trickling through it in drops, or little
streams, something like rain falling through the air.
The lime takes out the earthy impurities of the iron,
and gathers the coal-ashes as they come down. To
keep the flux in good condition, we have to draw it off,
as it becomes loaded with impurities, and make room
for fresh flux to fill its place.  Here it tomes out, as
you see, in what we call slag, or cinder. The flux has
still another use. Covering the melted metal as it does,
it protects it from the continued direct action of the
blast, which would soon oxidize it again, and make a
different quality of iron."
" How much pig-iron do you make here in a year?"
"A thousand tons a week, -over fifty thousand
tons a year."
"Where does your ore come from?"
"From New Jersey. It is dug out of the mountains, where it lies in beds all the way from two feet
to thirty-five feet thick."
Lawrence thought he would like to visit the iron



198           AMONG THE IRON-MEN.
mines. His curiosity was also excited with regard to
the processes by which this coarse pig-iron was afterwards converted into all the various shapes and qualities of cast-iron, wrought-iron, and steel. But Mr.
Clarence said, "I suspect our affectionate uncles
would like to hear something about us by this time";
and, thanking their new acquaintance, while they took
leave of him, they hastened back to the hotel.








Profile Plan  (showing the ship  as if sawed through the centre, from  stem  to stern).
1. Forefoot.    2. Stem and gripe.      3. Stemson, or apron.     4. Stern-Post.   5, 5. Fore and After Dead-woods.   6. Keelson.     7. Keel.
8. Rudder.      9. Cabin.              10. Galley.               11. Forecastle.    12. Chain Locker.               13. Centre of Displacement.
Deck Plan  (right-hand, or starboard side, shows the upper deck; left, or port side, the lower deck and timbers).,' or ah. Fl  o..Mi 8. at -rom
1. Fore Hatch.     2. Forecastle.     3. Store-room.     4. Galley.     5. State-room.    6. Main Hatch.    7. After Hatch.       8. State-rooms.
9. Captain's State-room. (Starboard side.)              10. Dining-room.                 11. Fore Mast.      12. Main Mast.      13. Mizzen Mast.




THE SHIP-YARD.            199
CHAPTER VI.
AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
I.
THE SHIP-YARD.
T HE next morning the two friends parted, Mr.
Clarence going off with his uncle down the
valley, and Lawrence returning with the doctor to
their home in Massachusetts.
But the friendship thus formed was destined to
continue;- and a few weeks later we find Lawrence
in Massachusetts, writing wonderfully long letters to
Mr. Clarence in Pennsylvania. Having obtained from
the writer authentic copies of these, we are enabled to
finish the story of his adventures in his own words.
Here I am again (he wrote); and I am going to
tell you about some of the things I have seen since I
said good by to you, that morning on the cars, - for
this is what you made me promise I would do. I am
not much used to writing letters, as maybe you remember; but my uncle says if I write just as I would talk,
I shall do well enough, - only it must be about
something I am interested in.
Well, what I am interested in just now is ships!
You see, my uncle sent me over to East Boston the




200        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
other day to find a man that moved away from here,
and owed him a bill, - and I was to have the money
if I collected it, which would be right handy about
Christmas time, you know. But the man was n't at
home; and while I was waiting for him, I thought I
would take a stroll down by the water. It was a
splendid day, —just cool enough; there was a fine
breeze blowing, and sailing vessels and ferry-boats
were passing in fine style; there was Charlestown and
the Navy-Yard over opposite; and on the shore, right
down before my eyes, was the skeleton of a big ship.
I started for that. It was on the farther side of a
great yard between the street and the water, - a yard
full of great timbers and piles of lumber, and men at
work chopping, measuring, hauling, and lifting; there
was also a saw-mill and a sort of blacksmith shop.
I looked into the office as I passed the gate. It
was a little square room, with two or three men in it
talking earnestly over some drawings and figures on
the desk, and a number of handsome ship-models, all
nicely polished, fastened to the walls. Then there
were framed pictures of steamers and ships under
full sail. The room had quite a nautical look. I
wanted to stop and ask about the models, but the
men were busy, and so I walked on down into the yard.
I.don't think you ever saw more chips on an acre
of ground! There were old chips rotting in the dirt;
fresh new chips just split off from the logs; and chips
in every stage of youth and old age between. There
was a wagon loading up with chips; there were




THE SHIP-YARD.             201
women filling baskets with chips; there was a great
staring sign, -" NO CHIPS TAKEN FROM THIS YARD ";
and a stick of timber, which a horse was dragging off,
went ploughing its way through dirt and chips. Burn
it over, and could n't you raise corn and beans in that
yard? I bet you!
I stopped to watch the men at work. One was
hewing out a stick of timber to something like this
shape. As he looked up and nodded at me, I asked
him what that stick was for. "That? That's a futtick," said he. "What's a futtick?" said I. "A
part of a frame," said he. "What's a frame?" said
I. "A frame is a rib, — what you would call a pair
of ribs.  These timbers we are hewing out here,
they're all for frames," said he. " They are different
shapes; no two exactly alike; and they are all cut
out, just as you see, with the axe. We have these
marks to go by."
Then I noticed the man who was making the
marks. He had some thin boards sawed in just the
shape he wanted the face of the timbers cut. He
laid one of these flat on a hewed stick, and marked
around the edges with a red pencil. Some of these
boards - they are called moulds - were very long
and curved only a little. Others were shorter, and
9*




202        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
curved very much more.  Some were curved like a
bow; others were almost straight, being curved only
a little at one end. As there are some hundreds of
timbers in the side of a big ship, and every timber
has to have a separate mould, and as some of these
moulds are made of two or three boards pieced together, you see it must take a good many boards, as
well as a good deal of gumptian, just to get the patterns ready, before even a timber is touched.  Then
here is another thing. Besides the shape given to
the stick by the mould, which determines its up-anddown curve in the ribs of the ship, it must be hewed
just right to fit in with the others, and make its part
of the curved lines running lengthwise along the vessel's side. So most of the timbers have to be bevelled
more or less. All the bevel angles come marked on
a board, called a "bevel-board," and the carpenter
takes off those, one by one, with his bevel instrument, and marks them on the ends of the sticks, for
the choppers. And he must be careful to get the
right bevel on the right stick. It is as if every bone
in your body had to be designed and shaped separately, before you were put together; and that makes
ship-building something wonderful, don't it? Though
it is really the pieces of only one side that the architect has anything to do with. He designs the ribs on
your right side, for instance. The moulds for one of
these are just turned over, and the bevels reversed, to
make the corresponding rib on your left side. Understand?




THE SHIP-YARD.            203
Your ribs are all of oak, as you must know.  The
best qualities of white or live oak are preferred, to
build you stanch and strong. And the timber must
be cut when the sap is out of it, and well seasoned
afterwards, or you are liable to rot.
The most of the timber used in this yard, one of
the men told me, comes from Virginia and Maryland.
It is n't quite so good always as our Northern white
oak, but it is cheaper. Oak in New England is getting to be a scarce article; but, since the war, whole
forests in Virginia are bought up cheap, so that the
expense of it here amounts to but little more than the
cost of cutting and shipping it.  Crews go out from
our ports and spend the winter getting timber when
the sap is down in the roots. They take out their
oxen and cows, and sometimes their wives and babies,
and build huts in the Southern forests, and have a
merry time of it. Often they take out the moulds of
a ship, and cut all her timbers into shape for building,
on the spot; so that when they are landed here they
are all ready to go into the frames. Think of a stick
fitted there in the woods for a particular part of a
particular rib of a particular ship to be built months
afterwards, hundreds of miles away! There seemed
to me something romantic about the voyages of
these crews; and I thought I should like to go out
with them, and spend a winter in the Virginia
forests. But the chopper who told me this, and who
has been out often, said he guessed I would find it
hard.




204        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
They don't work much in these ship-yards during
the winter, he told me. It is all out-door work. The
storms interfere with it, and the snow is a great bother.
"Sometimes you go out in the morning," he said,
"and find every timber in the yard covered; and the
stagings about the ship will be all slippery with snow
and ice, - for it is n't often a common vessel is built
under a house, like those over at the Navy-Yard." I
looked across and could see the immense ship-houses
standing with their ends towards the water. " This
ship," said he, " won't be complete before December;
and a good deal of snow will have to be shovelled for
her, before ever she is launched."
II.
BUILDING THE SHIP.
I WAS in a hurry to see how the frames were put
together; so I followed one of the timbers, which a
horse was hauling away, and soon came to a high
platform, to the top of which it iVas drawn up an inclined plane, by means of a rope and pulley.
I went up with it, stepping on cleats nailed across
the planks on one side of the plane. Beyond was the
half-finished skeleton of the ship that was building.
The stern was towards the water, and the other end
of the keel came up even with the platform. The
keel was an immense stick of timber, - or rather several sticks pieced together, -perfectly straight and




BUILDING THE SHIP.           205
nearly two hundred feet long. It was laid on piles
of blocks; and it slanted up a little from the end towards the water, so as to give the ship the proper
inclination for launching. If the keel was laid level,
she would n't slide off, you know.
The first thing I noticed was that the ribs were
complete on both sides to the tops, as far as they were
built at all. As I had seen a picture of a ship's ribs
built up a little way all round, before the upper pieces
were joined on, I had expected to see something like
that here; but I learned that only small boats are made
in that way, - though even large vessels used to. be,
fifty or a hundred years ago.
There the great ribs were, complete to about midships, and supported on the sides by two little groves
of props. The part of the keel towards the platform
was a naked piece of timber,- like half of your
backbone waiting for the ribs to be fitted to it.
There were a dozen men on the platform; and now
I saw what they were doing. They took the timbers
as they came up from the yard, and put them together in a frame shaped like a big letter U. This was
laid flat on the platform, with the bottom of the U
toward the ship.  The position it was designed for,
near the middle of the keel, where the vessel is broadest and the bottom flattest, gave it its U shape. Near
one of the ends it would have been shaped more like
a V.
This, then, was what the men called a " frame." It
was composed of fifteen timbers; and it measured




206         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
thirty-six feet across, and twenty-four in depth. All
these timbers have particular names. They are in
two tiers, one laid over the other, on the platform,
"breaking joints," as the carpenters say; you know, -
the ends of two sticks in one tier meet at about the
middle of a stick in the other tier, to which they are
bolted. First, across the bottom, is the "floor-timber "; then two "naval-timbers "; then a first, second, third, and fourth " futtock " (not " futtick" as the
man said), in each arm of the frame; then a "stanchion" and a "top-timber" finish the arm.  After
the timbers were got into place, holes were bored, and
long iron bolts driven through both tiers, four men
driving one bolt, their four sledge-hammers revolving
in the air and hitting the iron one after another, in
complete time, making a lively scene.
When the frame was finished, pulley-ropes were
made -fast to it, and it was drawn off the platform
down towards the ship, sliding fiat along the keel, and
a couple of planks were laid to support it, one on each
side. When the bottom of the frame was near the
standing frames,- the exact place for it being marked
on the keel, - pulley-ropes were attached to the tops
of the U, and it was raised right up into position, as
neatly as anything you ever saw. The pulleys were
worked by a capstan back in the yard. While this
was getting into place, another frame was going
together on the platform.
I climbed up into the half-finished skeleton, and
looked around. On one side stood a twenty-foot lad



BUILDING THE SHIP.          207
der, with a man on the upper rounds, fastening the
last frame to the others with a cleat.  His head did
not reach the top. The ship was still broader than
she was deep; the bottom timbers forming an almost
level floor for several yards each side of the keel. As
I walked towards the stern she grew narrower, till
finally the ribs crooked right up sharply frbm the
keel, and there was no floor at all.
From the stern I looked out on the water, into
which she was to be some day launched. The "ways "
were already laid for her there, - timbers on blocks,
like the two rails of a railroad, sloping down into the
waves that were dashing over them.
The " stern-post " was not yet raised. It lay on a
platform at the lower end of the keel, with the " transoms," or cross-timbers, already framed to it. This
"post" is one of the strongest and most important timbers in the ship. It stands upright on the end of the
keel, into which it is mortised. There is a groove cut
in the back side of it, for the rudder-post to turn in.
All the converging lines of the ship's under sides are
brought into it with a graceful sweep. The transoms,
and the stern-frame built out from them, make the
broad and high part of the stern.
The frames in the bottom of the ship were set four
inches apart. The two sets of timbers in each frame
were bolted close together at the bottom; but up on
the sides I noticed that pains had been taken to make
an open space between them, - a wide crack. I asked
a workman what that was for.




208         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
"Why, you see," said he, "a ship has to be preserved like so much corned beef or pork."
"How so?" said I.
"She has to be salted down," said he.
"Salted down!" said I, thinking he must be joking.
"To be sure," said he. "This'ere ship's timbers
would last a hundred years and more, if't wa'n't for
the dry rot. That's the ruination of vessels. It ain't
like common rot; that goes to work in an honest
kind of a way on the outside. Dry rot is sly; it
begins its mischief on the inside of a timber, and
turns it all to a kind of dry, crumbly powder, before
ever you suspect it's there. I've seen a stick completely eaten up by it, while the painted outside
remained as slick and han'some as ever."
I asked what occasioned the rot.
"That's more'n I know," says he. "Some say it's
a vegetable growth, - a sort of fungus, I believe they
call it. The seeds are supposed to be in the sap of
the tree, though I don't believe that, for timber that's
been preserved hundreds of years will be attacked
finally by the rot in certain situations. The planks
we bend on to the bows and after-parts of the ship's
sides have to be steamed; and it's found the dry rot
don't attack them. These bottom timbers are protected by salt water, - that kills the rot, - but the
upper timbers don't get the benefit of that, and so we
salt'em down. Them openings between'em are all
filled in with salt, when the frames are covered. It
will take a hundred and eighty hogsheads of salt to
salt down this'ere ship."




BUILDING THE SHIP.            209
That astonished me. Just think of it; a ship carries a small cargo of salt in the crevices between her
ribs! The man hewed away a spell with his adz (he
was smoothing the insides of the frames for the planks
to be put on; he called the work "dubbing"), then
looked up again and said, —
"The kind of cargo a ship carries makes all the
difference in the world with the rot. She is lucky if
she gets a cargo of salt for her first voyage. Spiceyou would hardly believe it -is about the worst
thing. I've known a new ship put into the spice
trade to rot out in three years."
I looked over into a neighboring ship-yard, and
saw the skeleton of a vessel nearly complete. So I
thought I would go and see what was the next thing
to be done.  They were putting the keelson into her,
- kelson the men call it, - a son of the keel, I suppose.
It is a set of timbers inside the frames, running the
length of the ship, corresponding with the keel outside. There were three courses of timbers, sixteen
inches square, laid one on another, and making a pile
(16.X 3 = 48 inches) four feet high.  These rested on the floor-timbers, which were eighteen inches
thick. The keel under them was two feet. On the
bottom  of the keel was a five-inch plank "shoe."
This made a "backbone" to the ship almost eight
feet through! I must n't forget the "sister keelsons," -tw.o strong timbers laid one on each side of
the true keelson. Is n't there a backbone for you!
I asked the carpenter who gave me these figures
N




210         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
what the " shoe " was for. " It is a protection to the
keel," he said. "If a ship strikes a rock, the shoe
takes the brunt of the stroke, and often she may be
got off by the shoe parting from the keel, and letting
her slide."
They were putting on the top timbers of the keelson, and fastening them with bolts driven clear through
into the keel. Such bolts! They were not driven by
sledge-hammers, but by a sort of pile-driver, worked
IM BOTING THE KEELOlI.
BOLTING THE KEELSON.




BUILDING THE SHIP.           211
by four men, who drew up the heavy iron weight by
a pulley, and let it fall on the end of the bolt, which
a fifth man guided.
In the yard some men were hewing out a rudderpost, - an immense timber thirty-six feet long. All
the upper end of it was round as a mast; that comes
up through a hole in the stern, and has the tiller
attached to it. In large vessels there are ropes made
fast to the tiller, and then to the wheel, so that the
man at the wheel steers the ship. The rudder-post
fits into the groove in the stern-post, upon which it is
hung by pintles, - bolts making a sort of hinge.
Only one side of the lower part of the rudder-post
was rounded; some men were getting ready a stick
of timber to be fitted to the other side, the upper end
of it to come up as high as the top of the water after
the ship was launched and freighted. Just these two
timbers make the rudder that guides the ship.  One
would hardly think that turning it a little to the
right or left would change her course so quickly! I
suppose I need n't tell you that she can't be steered
unless she is in motion. Leave the rudder alone, as
she sails, and it will follow straight after the keel.
But turn it ever so little, and the force of the water
striking on one side pushes it off the other way, and
the stern off with it.  Moving her stern a little one
way causes the bow to swing off in the opposite direction, you know; and this I believe is all the mystery
there is in steering a ship.
The skeleton of this vessel was all complete except




212         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
a few of her bow timbers. Each rib in this part is
framed and raised separately.  It runs up to an
astonishing height above the keel, —the bow being
the loftiest part. The stem.post was nearly ready to
raise. This is to the bow or stem what the stern-post
is to the stern. It is an immense timber as large as
the keel, into which it is framed,- or rather it is
several timbers pieced together to give length, with
the curve that shapes the prow.  Where it joins the
keel it makes almost a right-angle.
This point is called a "fore-foot."  Behind the
stem-post, curving with it, and secured to it, is a
broad timber, or series of timbers, called the " apron."
This is fastened to the keel by a " knee " (there are
lots of knees in a ship). So you see her bow has one
thing that belongs to a quadruped, another that belongs to a biped, and a third that belongs to both. I
may add that her prow is her "head." A curious
thing a ship, is n't she, though?
For some distance back of the lower part of the
stem-post she is made so sharp, for cutting her way
through the water, that there is no room for framing;
so the thin space between her sides is there filled in
with what is called dead wood, - heavy timbers
nicely fitted and shaped, to bring, as you may say,
the wedge to an edge.  The stern, below the waterline, is as sharp as the stem, and I believe a little
sharper; and the thin part there is filled in with
dead wood just the same.




FINISHING.               213
III.
FINISHING.
IN the next yard was a ship nearly finished, and I
went to take a look at her. There were three stagings
built all about her, and men on them at work; and
they kept up a jolly hammering and clattering, I tell
you! A dozen men were carrying a long plank up
an inclined plane, to the middle staging.  It was of
hard pine, five inches thick, six or seven broad, and
fifty feet long.  Six men at each end, with their
shoulders under it, had hard work to get it up.
"They are putting on her skin," a workman told
me. The skin I found consisted of such planks. as
these.  She was already half covered, from the keel
upwards. The planks upon her sides are thicker than
those below, and are called "wales."  I thought the
big one the men were carrying up must be the Prince
of Wales.
After they got it up on the staging, they placed it
on the top of the planking already fastened to the
timbers. As the ship's side bulged, while the plank
was nearly straight, it had to be brought to its place
by means of ring-bolts in the timbers, levers, ropes,
wedges, and sledge-hammers. For the short curves
about the'ow and stern the planks have to be steamed,
and put on wet and hot, or they would split all to
pieces in bending. The wales do not run in straight
horizontal lines, parallel with the ship's water-line,




214        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
0.
Wallaa11 as
"' lli                                   w




FINISHING.              215
but they sweep from end to end in sagging lines,
highest above the water at the bow and lowest
about midships. The line of a ship's deck makes
a similar curve. This is called the "sheer."
As soon as a plank was in place, it was fastened by
spikes driven at each end. Afterwards auger-holes
were bored at intervals clear through plank, timber,
and inside plank, or "ceiling" (for this ship was
already lined); then long wooden oak pins, called
"trunnels" (though you won't find trunnel in the
dictionary; the word is spelled treenail), were driven
through, and wedged at both ends without and within.
Besides these fastenings, iron bolts were let through
and clinched on the inside.
The "skin" planks were cut so as to fit closely
together against the timbers, and yet leave an open
seam between them, a quarter of an inch wide, at the
surface. On the lower staging the calkers were at
work. Two men had eight or ten light iron wedges,
which they drove into a seam, and opened it a quarter of an inch further.  Other men followed, driving
oakum  in between the planks, with mallets and
calking-irons. As fast as the head calker came up
to the wedges they were knocked out, and oakum
filled their place, while they were carried forward and
driven into the seam again farther along. The ring
of so many mallets made merry music, for a person
who likes a lively noise.  The oakum was driven in
out of sight; it was afterwards to be covered with
hot pitch from a syringe-like instrument, run along




216        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
_ —n~I                             _
THE CALKERS AT WORK.
the seam.  This had been done in some places; and
there carpenters were smoothing the planks all over
with planes, and making the bottom ready for sheathing.
I went up to the top staging and climbed over* on
the upper deck, which men were calking in about the
same way. Every exposed seam about a ship must
be calked, you know, or the constant straining she




FINISHING.                217
gets in the heavy seas will make her leak like a
sieve.
Carpenters were building the deck-houses and dressing the stanchion timbers, - the uppermost timbers
of her frames, that rise above the deck and support
her rails. The top rail is sometimes called a "monkeyrail."  The wood-work between that and the waterways is her " bulwarks."  The "water-ways " are deep
planks that form a way for the water about her deck
(which is rounded a little, like a duck's back, so as to
shed it), and let it out through holes called " scuppers." Secured to the stanchions, below the monkeyrail, is commonly another rail full of holes for wooden
pillns, to which the sail-ropes are made fast, This is
the "pin-rail."  The rail about the stern is the "taffrail."  You see every part of a ship has its peculiar
name. I am going to get, if I can, some drawings,
showing the principal parts, and send them to you.
From the upper deck (sometimes called the " spardeck ") I went down a steep ladder, through a " hatchway" (sailors usually say simply the "hatch," as the
" after hatch," the "main hatch "), and landed on the
lower, or " main deck." There I had a good chance to
see how she was finished up inside. Overhead, supporting the upper deck, and binding the two sides of
the ship together, were " beams," extending across, and
secured at each end by a naturally crooked piece of
timber called a " knee." One end of this knee was
fastened to the beam, the other to the side of theship. There was another set.of beams supporting
10




218              AMONG  THE  SHIP-BUILDERS.
2idship Section (one side).'1~~~~3~ ~
1 1,1. Timbers of the Frame    2. Keel.
3, Keelson.              4, 4. Sister Keelsons.
6. Ceiling.              6, 6. Knees.
7, 7. Hold and Between-Deck Stanchions.
8. Lower, or Main Deck.    12. Water-Way.
9. Upper, or Spar Deck.    13. Bulwarks.
10. Hold.                 14. Rail.
11. Plank Sheer.          15. Gunwale.
the  deck  under my  feet.   Besides the knees at the
ends, each beam of the lower deck was Aupported at
its centre by a stanchion, or prop, resting on the keelson. The beams of the upper deck had a row of just
such stanchions, resting on the row below.




FINISHING.              219
Through openings in the lower deck I could look
down into the immense "hold."  There were holes
through both decks for the masts, which were to rest
on the keel, secured to it by blocks called "steps."
The " ceiling "  that is to say, the inside plankingwas quite thin on the bottom of the hold. But it was
made very heavy - a foot thick, I believe - where
the sides betgan to rise, diminishing gradually to some
seven inches between decks.
The clatter kept up inside that ship was jolly!
The men were pounding down the ends of the bolts
driven through from the outside; and then every
stroke of the hammer or a calker's mallet on the
" skin," or the deck above, was heard as plainly as if
all these thirty or forty men were thundering away
inside of her.
Some men were polishing down the beams and
ceiling, and making them as handsome as the woodwork of the finest houses.
As I went out, and down over the side again, I saw
a fellow bringing up coarse salt in a coal-hod and
pouring it into the spaces between the timbers, which
he kept filled as fast as the' skin" was put on.
The more I learned about a ship, and saw how
skilfully designed and nicely fitted everything had to
be, to give her symmetry and strength, and make her
sit well on the water, the more I wondered at it; and
it seemed to me one of the greatest mechanical feats
to make the plan and patterns of a ship. I said as
much to one of the carpenters, who replied, "You
ought to visit a moulding-loft."




220         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
I asked what that was.
"The ship architect's workshop," said he, "where
his model and the mould-boards are made. It's a
curiosity."
I asked, would the architect like to have me look
in, - for of course I regarded him as a great man.
"Certainly," said he; " he'11 be glad to show you;
and you'11 find him a perfect gentleman."
The carpenter gave me his address; it was only a
few squares off. But, dear me, Mr. Clarence! I
thought I could tell you all I had to tell on one sheet
of paper, and at one sitting; now this is the third
evening I have been writing, and I have n't begun to
tell you the most interesting things about ship-building. So I'11 hold up for the present, and give you
the rest in another letter.
Yours, out of breath,
LAWRENCE.
P. S. - I collected that bill i
IV.
THE MOULDING-LOFT.
A FEW evenings later Lawrence wrote:I began to tell you how I went to find the shipwright, or ship architect, as they call him. I soon
saw his sign on the upper story of a great, long old
wooden building, near the ferry. At the top of two
flights of stairs outside I came to a door with his name
and slate on it; it was partly open, and I looked in.




THE MOULDING-LOFT.            221
It was a great room in the top of the building, at
least a hundred and fifty feet long and thirty broad.
On the sleepers overhead, beneath the roof, were piled
all sorts of odds and ends of lumber. One side of the
floor was occupied by piles of boards, carpenters'
horses, benches, and tools; but the larger part was an
open space, in the middle of which a man was at work
on his knees, marking out lines by thin strips of
boards or battens bent into curves, and held in place
by awls stuck into the floor. He wore, tied on his
knees, strong caps of leather, to protect them as he
knelt at his work.  I noticed that the toes of his
shoes were worn through.  He looked up pleasantly, under his broad-brimmed straw hat, and said,
" Come in."
I told him frankly what had brought me there.
"That's right; glad to see you," said he. "I'll be
through here in a few minutes, then I'11 show you."
I watched him at his work; and, looking around,
saw that almost the entire floor was covered with
long, sweeping, curved lines, in different groups, and
straight lines running across them in places.
"Do you see what I am making here? " said he.
I said I supposed it must be the designs'of a ship's
timbers.
"You are right," said he. " These lines I am drawing now are for one of the ship's ribs.  That is built
up of several timbers; and I mark here a pattern of
each. I cut out a mould-board after the pattern, and
send that to the carpenter to cut his timber by."




222        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
" But how do you get your plan in the first place?
That is what puzzles me!" I said.
He said he would show me that by and by, and
kept on marking and talking. It was fun to see him
bend a batten to just the curve he wanted, stick awls
to hold it, and then mark his lines by it. He said it
required five hundred moulds to make the timbers of
a ship of the size he was designing (about thirteen
hundred tons' burden); and it would take more than
twice the number, "but," said he, "I make moulds
for the timbers of only one side; and then there are
several frames near the middle of the ship made just
alike, from the same set of moulds."
I said, " I had no idea till to-day how much timber
it took to build a ship!"
" It takes more," said he, "than can be got into
another ship of the same size."
"What is the weight of such a ship as this when
finished?" I asked.
"A  thirteen-hundred-ton ship will weigh about
nine hundred tons; that is, a wooden ship. An iron
ship of the same capacity- "
"Will weigh considerably more, I suppose," I said,
as he stopped to make some figures.
"Considerably less," said he. "An iron ship of
thirteen hundred tons will weigh less than seven
hundred tons."
"IDo they build ships all of iron?" I asked.
"Yes; and they are the cheapest and best ships
that can be made. The first cost is a third more than




THE MOULDING-LOFT.           223
that of wooden ships; but they are more buoyant,
they carry a larger freight, they are stronger, and
they last three times as long.  The dry-rot don't
trouble them, and the water-worms let them alone.
In place of these large timbers they have slender iron
ribs; and in place of the heavy planking without and
within they have just a thin skin of iron plates riveted together, less than an inch thick, except in very
large ships.  A great many ships are made of iron
nowadays, especially in England, where iron is comparatively cheap and timber dear.  The largest ship
ever built is made of iron; that is the Great Eastern,
- six hundred and eighty feet long by eighty-two
and a half broad, and fifty-eight deep; a magnificent
structure, though practically she don't seem to be
good for much except laying Atlantic cables."
"What keeps an iron ship from sinking? " I asked.
"The question came up at school the other day, and
though we all seemed to know, yet not one of us, not
even the teacher, could give a satisfactory answer.
Iron will sink; then why don't an iron boat sink? "
"It seems to me you ought to answer that question," said he. "Why does wood float while iron does
not?"
"Because," I said, "wood weighs less than the
same bulk of water, while iron weighs more; and
the heaviest substance goes to the bottom."
" In other words," said he, " wood, in order to sink,
must displace more than its own weight of water.
Now a boat is constructed in such a way as to dis



224         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
place a great deal more than her own weight of water
by being made.hollow. All the air she contains below her water-line is in the balance against an equal
bulk of water outside. An iron ship, in fact, displaces
just as much water as if she was built of solid metal.
Let the water into her, and it drives the air out; then
she displaces only the actual bulk of the iron, and
down she goes.
"This question of displacement," he went on to
say, "is a very important one in building a ship.
We must know just how much water she will displace, in order to know what weight she will bear up.
Now, thirty-five cubic feet of salt water weigh a ton.
Salt water is heavier, you know, than fresh water; it
takes thirty-six cubic feet of fresh water to weigh the
same. A ton in our calculations is twenty-two hundred and forty pounds.  Then for every ton's weight
she buoys up she must displace thirty-five cubic feet
of water.  Her solid contents below her water-line
will of course just equal the amount of water she displaces, - or, as we say in one word, the displacement."
I asked if it was by such calculations that a-ship's
tonnage was ascertained.
" When we speak of a ship of so many tons' burden, we mean the government rate. The government
measures and rates every American ship.  By the
new rule the interior of a ship is measured, -- just
as you would get the solid contents of an odd-shaped
box, - and every hundred cubic feet below her upper deck count for a ton. Some vessels will actually




THE MOULDING-LOFT.              225
carry a good deal more than they are rated by this
rule.  Some kinds of freight — such as iron, and
other solid matters - go by weight.  Others - such
as boxes of shoes — go by measurement, a certain
bulk being considered equal to a ton."
"Do builders often make two ships from the same
set of moulds?"
"Sometimes; but usually they prefer to have a new
model for a new ship; perhaps they want to make
her a little larger, or a little smaller, or sharper, or
broader, or think they can improve upon the old
model some way.  Now  step here, and I'11 show
you what a model is. This is the first stage of it."
As I saw nothing but a bundle of plain boards in
a press, I thought at first that he meant something
else. There were, perhaps, a dozen boards, two thirds
of an inch thick and about six feet long.
"After these are pressed firmly into shape," said
he, " they are held together by screws, making what
we call a block. Then we commence working it down
to something like this shape."
He took me into a little workroom at the end of the
loft, where a perfect little model - or, strictly speaking, half-model - of a ship lay on a work-bench.
Imagine a ship sawed in two vertically in the centre
from  stem  to stern, and one half of her will give
you an idea of the form of this model.* Only it was
* Our model, deck plans, half-breadth and body plans, are from photographs of a model and drawings kindly furnished by Lawrence's
friend, Mr. William H. Varney, Assistant Naval Constructor at the
United States Navy-Yard, Portsmouth, N. H.
10*                               o




226         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
solid.  Examining it, I found that
it was carved out of just such a
bundle of boards as I had seen;
and the seams between them made
so many parallel stripes, or water-   /
lines, along the sides; only a top
board had been added, thicker than
the others, and carved so as to make
the curved line, or sheer, higher at
the bow and stern than amidships.
I asked why he'did not carve his
model from one solid block, instead             x
of packing a pile of boards together.
"I'11 show you soon," said he.
"This model is n't quite finished
yet. I work it down till I think I
have got it about right, or till the
owner of the ship to be built from
it is satisfied.  When he comes in
to see it to-morrow, he may say,'Make her a little sharper,'- for
the'fancy is for sharp ships just
now.  There is this great advantage in making a model, - anybody can tell, by looking at it, just what the shape of
the ship is to be. English shipwrights do not make
models, but draw all their lines on paper first.
"The way we get our lines is this: When the
model is completed I lay it on a smooth surface, flat
side down, and mark around it, —that is, draw its




THE MOULDING-LOFT.           227
profile. Then the water-lines are marked
in. This forms what we call the sheer
3plan.
"Then. I remove the screws, take the
mnodel to pieces, and lay one board after
another, beginning with the narrowest
at the bottom, on another plain surface,
— the straight side of each being adjusted to a common centre-line, representing the centre of the ship. A line
marked about the curved side of each
board shows her  exact proportions
through that part which it represents.
In this way we get what is called the
half-breadth plan.
"By a scale of measurements we obtain from these two plans the exact
dimensions of every part of the ship,
and make a third plan, called the body
plan. This represents her entire breadth
and height, as viewed from one end,
with curved lines on one side of a centre line showing the frame timbers of
the forward half of the ship, and on
the other side showing those of the
after part.
"Now I'11 explain to you how we
get out the designs of the frame timbers.  The model is on a scale of one
inch to three feet; that is, every inch




228        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
IS
He




THE MOULDING-LOFT.             229
of the model stands for thirty-six inches in the ship
to be built. Having got our body plan, therefore, we
have only to draw it on the floor of the loft on a scale
thirty-six times as large. Then every one of these
curved lines represents a rib, for which we go to work
and make as many moulds as are required."
"All that looks very simple now," I said. "But
a man might learn it all by heart; still, it would
bother him to build a ship!"
" I guess it would," said he. "For instance, a man
comes to me and says,'I want a steamboat for the
cotton trade on a Southern river. She must carry
three thousand bales where the water is only twelve
feet deep.' I have to plan accordingly. Then one
man wants a vessel for speed, while with another a
heavy freight is the chief consideration.  For speed,
we make the model sharper, - on the principle that
a knife will cut the water easier than a walking-stick
will. But the sharper a ship, the less room she has
for cargo.  We make more room by building her
broader but then she meets with more resistance
passing through the water. Owners choose certain
qualities for a ship, according to the trade she is in,
- whether it is important she should go quickly
with a light load, or leisurely with a heavy load. But
it is n't all in her shape'; she must be rigged right
and loaded right to sail well."
I asked him if great improvements had not been
made in modelling and rigging ships within a few
years.




230         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
"xWethink so," he replied, with a smile. "A modern-built ship, designed for speed, — what we call a
clipper ship, —will sail three times as fast as a ship
built forty years ago; and it takes fewer men to
manage her sails."
"What are the best proportions for vessels?" I
asked.
"As a general rule the length of a ship is five times
her breadth; her depth, one half or two thirds her
breadth.  Steamers are longer; a length equal to
eight times the breadth is common. Length adds
speed, but it weakens a vessel."
"When you get your floor covered with marks
what do you do, - rub them out?"
"No; plane them off with what is called a lazy
man's plane." And he showed me one; it had a handle like a mop, so that a man could use it standing.
V.
SPARS AND RIGGING.,
IN another room was his office; and there I saw
several beautifully finished models of ships and steamers fastened to the wall, the pieces composing each
having been finally glued together and polished up.
I noticed that neither of them had the keel attached.
"No," he said; "the keel is n't necessary in a
model, though it is indispensable in a ship. It not
only gives strength, but a sailing vessel can't beat
without it."




SPARS AND RIGGING.             231
I told him I never could understand how a' ship
sailed against the wind.
"She can't sail directly against it," he said.  "But
she goes this way," - he drew a perpendicular arrow.
"That represents which way the wind blows.  Now
suppose the ship's course lies in an opposite direction.  But the nearest she can come to that is a line
crossing the course of the wind something like this
smaller arrow.  Her sails are set diagonally,-this
fashion, - so that the wind fills them, and presses
them  forward in the direction of this dotted line.
<.........
But a ship meets with great resistance going sidewise through the water; the keel is like a blade on
the bottom; it adds greatly to that resistance, and
serves to keep her in a straight course. So instead
of sailing in the direction of the dotted line, she sails
in the direction her keel points. But head her too
much that way, and she drifts off with the wind.
Some vessels will sail much closer to the wind than
others.  After she has sailed as long as the master
thinks best in that direction her head is turned suddenly toward the wind; her momentum through the




232         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
water keeps her in motion till she comes clear around,
and gets the wind on her other side, and sails off on
what is called another tack-. In this way she describes
a zigzag course against the course of the wind, sailing
several miles for every one she makes in the direction
she wishes to go. That. is what we call beating. Some
badly built or imperfectly rigged ships won't stay,that is, they won't go around with their heads to the
wind, but lose their momentum, and blow off; such
ships, in tacking, have to wear, -- turning the opposite
way, with their sterns to the wind; a great disadvantage, as they necessarily go back a little on their
course before they can get around on the other
tack."
He took up a piece of wood from his desk, and,
handing it to me, asked what I thought of it.  I
found it light as cork, and full of holes as a
piece of honeycomb. It was a bit of ship's timber
that had been destroyed by water-worms. The outer surface was smooth, appearing to be perforated
here and there with pin-points. The worms were no
larger than that, he said, when they went in; but,




SPARS AND RIGGING.            233
feeding on the wood, they grew rapidly, until they
made a hole as large as a pipe-stem. They are borers;
and, what is curious, the cutting end of a modern
ship-auger is copied after their boring apparatus, and
it is found to work better, in making a straight, deep
hole, than any other.
"This ship," he said, " was loaded so that the water
came above her sheathing; and so the worms got at
her. A ship's bottom must be sheathed in some sort
of metallic covering, or she is soon destroyed by insects, shell-fish, and marine vegetables, adhering to
her. Copper makes the best sheathing, as it corrodes
and poisons whatever touches it. But it is expensive, and it wastes rapidly; so a composition of copper and zinc is commonly substituted for it."
" When is the sheathing put on?"
"Sometimes just before she is launched," said he;
"but it is liable to get injured when she goes off;
and, besides, any leaks in her can't be so well detected
and stopped afterwards. So she is usually launched
first, and then taken to a dry-dock and sheathed. She
is shut into the dock, the water is pumped out by
steam-engines, and let in again after the. sheathing is
put on."
He told me ever so much about the spars and rigging, which I don't think I could write out if I should
try. A ship is a vessel' with three masts and square
sails. A brig has two masts and square sails. A
schooner has two masts with fore-and-aft sails. An
hermaphrodite brig has the foremast square-rigged




234         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
and the mainmast fore-and-aft rigged; she is half
brig and half schooner.  A sloop has only one mast.
Then there is the topsail schooner, with a square topsail; and the barkantine, with three masts, the foremast rigged like a ship's, and the other two schoonerrigged.
Fore-and-aft Sail.
The mast of a small vessel is generally a single
well-rounded, tapering stick of pine. But each of the
three masts of one of the largest ships consists of a
number of sticks. The lower part of each has a central stick, and others fitted about it, - all well-rounded and hooped, to give greater size and strength. At
the head of the lower mast is a platform called the
"top."  Standing on this is another mast, called the
"topmast," - secured by a " cap."  Atop of the topmast is the "top-gallant" mast; and over that the
"royal." Some ships have besides what is called a
"skysail mast," top of all.  Each of these masts has
a square sail of the same name hung upon it by a
yard.  The masts are held in their places by immensely large ropes, called " stays," and by smaller




SPARS AND RIGGING.                          235
0Xc                    t
a. Foresail.                           n. Main Skysail.
b. Fore Topsail.                       o Main Topmast Studdingsail.
c. Fore Top-gallantsail.              p. Main Top-gallant Studdingsail.
d. Fore Royal.                         r. Mizzen Topsail.
e. Fore Skysail.                       s. Mizzen Top-gallantsail
f Fore Studdingsail.                   t. Mizzen Royal.
g. Fore Topmast Studdingsail.          u. Mizzen Skysail.
h. Fore Top-gallant Studdingsail.      a. Jib.
i. Mainsail.                          w. Fore Topmast Staysail.
k. Main Topsail.                       x. Fore Staysail.
1. Main Top-gallantsail.              y. Fore and Main Spencers.
m. Main Royal.                          z. Driver or Spanker.
ropes called "shrouds," which  also  serve as ladders;
the  rounds, or  steps,  are  cross-ropes, called  "ratlines."    The  "halyards" are  ropes for hoisting  the
yards and sails; the "braces" are for swinging them
around; the "sheets" are ropes for hauling  and  fas



236        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
tening the lower corners of the sails. These, and other
ropes used in managing the sails, are called the "running rigging."   The stays, shrouds,'etc., are the
"standing rigging."
So much I remember. He has promised to get
me a drawing of a full-rigged ship, and to mark in
the names of the sails for me; if he does, you shall
see it.
VI.
THE LAUNCH.
ALL at once, while I was talking with the shipwright, he looked at his watch.
" There's to be a launch to-day at high tide," he
said. "It's almost high tide now."
You'd better believe that excited me, for a launch
was just what I wanted to see. I had passed right
by the yard where it was to take place without knowing it. As I might have time to see it yet, if I hurried, I bade him good by, and went plunging down
his outside stairs like a mad boy. Right under his
loft was a rigging-loft, where men were at work making the stays and shrouds of ships, which I should
have looked into, if I had had time; but the launch
was the thing just then.
I arrived on the ground-just in season. A crowd
had gathered in the yard since I passed by; and
another crowd was standing or sitting on the wharves
or timbers of a neighboring yard, waiting to see the




THE LAUNCH.               237
show. In ten minutes she would go off; and in the
mean while I looked sharply about to see how the
thing was to be done.
I told you of the ways laid on blocks, and extending
down into the water from under the stern of the first
ship I visited,- a sort of huge wooden railroad, you
know. Well, a track like this had been built of timbers running from the water all along under the ship's
bottom, on each side of her keel. It had a slope of
nearly an inch to the foot, just enough to make her
slide off handsomely.
She did not rest directly on these ways, understand. Built up all about her was a curious sort of
frame, called a cradle' the bottom timbers of which
are called bilgeways. These were the runners on which
she was to take a ride down the track.  She was
blocked up by timbers and planks between her bottom and the bilgeways; and these rested on the ways,
which had been well "greased with taller," as a workman informed me, and afterwards, when the tallow
was cold, "slushed with ile and soft-soap."  The
under-sides of the bilgeways had also been greased.
To prevent her from running off the track, strong
hard-wood " ribbons " were fastened to the top of the
ways on the outer edge, and well supported by slanting props set in the firm ground.
Her entire weight did not rest on the cradle as yet;
otherwise there would have been nothing to prevent
her from sliding down the slippery track.  The piles
of blocks on which she had been built were still un



238        AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
der her keel, and a few shores at her sides. While I
was looking on, the shores were taken away, and the
word came to launch, when a number of men on each
side, who stood ready with axes, commenced splitting
out the top block of each pile.
I got a good position at a safe distance on a pile of
lumber near the saw-mill. The crowd was perfectly
silent, waiting to see the huge thing start; and there
was scarcely any noise but the sound of the axes, and
the puffing of the steam-tugs lying off the yard waiting to catch her as soon as she was launched.
" I hope the tugs will do better than they did with
the last ship I saw go off," said a man who stood on
the boards beside me. "She was a very large ship;
the cables parted they undertook to hold her with;
she got away, and ran clean across the stream, butted
agin the navy-yard wall, poked her nose into it fifteen feet, and there stuck."
As he had broken the silence, I asked, "Do they
always launch stern-foremost? "
"Oftener than any other way," he said.  "Sometimes they launch bow foremost. Very large vessels
in narrow streams have to be launched sideways.
The Great Eastern was launched sideways in the
Thames."
The men had begun splitting out the blocks nearest the water.  I supposed they would have to split
out the top block on the last pile under the bow
before she would start. But half a dozen piles still
remained untouched, when suddenly the crowds on




THE LAUNCH.               239
each side shouted, "She is going!"  The men with
the axes sprang away, while the last blocks whirled
over beneath her keel, as her weight came down on
the bilgeways, and they began to slide. It was a
grand sight,- that immense structure, a ship of the
largest size, starting slowly at first, then moving off
faster and faster, striking the water, and throwing up
a great wave as she plunged in! You never heard
heartier cheers! I cheered and swung my hat till
everybody else was done, I was so excited. The tugs
held her; and then we cheered again. Everybody
likes to see a great enterprise carried out with such
perfect success; and building and launching such a
vessel is one of the grandest.
There were a few gentlemen "and ladies aboard of
her, when she went off; and how I envied them!
Yet people said the sight was better from the
shore.
Well, it was all over; and what astonished me as
much as anything was the hole she made in that yard
after she had gone off.  Imagine a meeting-house in
a village square suddenly disappearing, leaving it
vacant, and a crowd of people around the spot
where it stood, and you'11 have some idea of it.
This ship had been sheathed before she was
launched.  As the tugs began to move off with
her down the streamn, I asked where she was going.
"To the shears," said some one.
I asked what the "shears" were, and was told
that they were a couple of spars lashed together, set




240         AMONG THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
upright, and furnished with tackle for lifting the
masts into and o-tt of vessels.  I ought to have told
you before, that a vessel's spars (which include masts,
yards, bowsprit, bobm, etc.) are not put in till after
she is launched.
It was too late for me to visit the shears; and I
guess you are glad of it,.- for have n't I written you
another stunningly long letter?  The shears, instead
of cutting it short, would only make it longer.
Good by.
LAWRENCE.




INDEX.
A.                    Coal, what becomes of, when burned,
28; quantity consumed by glass-furAccidents, in coal mines, 170, 171.        naces, 38; power of, 111, 145; how
Air, necessary to combustion, 39, 40.      mined, 151, 152; different kinds of,
Alkalies, in glass-making, 51.             163, 164.
Amalgam, for mirrors, 92.                Coal-breaker, 126 128.
Anthracite, first used, 145; how mined,  Coal formation, 114, 115, 120, 138 - 141.
151, 152; different kinds of, 163, 164.  Coal mine, 134, 141-173; caving in of,
Apron, a ship's, 202.                      111, 112; how  ventilated, 118, 154,
Arsenic, in glass-making, 50.              156; on fire, 189.
Coal-miners, 125,. 142, 149; houses of,
109, 110; in the war, 116; how paid,
B.                      123, 124; in the old country, 143.
Coal-shaft, 118, 119, 121, 131 -134.
Barometer tube, how made 67.             Colliery, 117, 122.
Beams, of  ship, 218Composition, secret of fluency in, 177.
Beating, theory of a ship's 231, 239.    Copper, for ship's sheathing, 233.
Cream-pitcher, glass, how made, 71.
Beds, of coal, versus "veins," 138, 139-  Cr    pherglassshoww made, 71.
of soft coal and anthracite, compared, Crw  g, 
~~~~~~~139.  ~Cullet, 47,48.
Bevel-board, in ship-building, 202.      Culm, 129.
Blast-furnace, 181-188, 195, 196.
Blowing-house, 52, 54.                                      D.
Boracic acid, in glass-making, 50.
Borers, in ships, 232, 233.              Dead wood, in ship-building, 212.
Breast, a miner's, 146.                  Dean, Dr., teaches Lawrence to swim, 2;
Bulwarks, of - ship, 217.                  to rescue a drowning person, 3; to resuscitate the  drowned, 4-8; takes
Lawrence to glass-works, 27; to coal
region, 101; idea of letter-writing, 199.
Cap.                   Decks, of ship, 217.
Diagrams, of coal mine,'very original,
Calking, a ship, 215, 216.                 154- 157, 162; of the parts of a ship,
Cannel coal, why so called, 164.           218 and opposite.
Carboniferous period, 114, 115.          Diamonds, for glass-cutting, 91, 97.
Caster vial, how made, 70.'  Diamond dust," 71.
Casting-house, iron-works, 188 -191.    I Displacement, question of, in ship-buildCats in coal mines, 157-159.               ing, 225.
Cave, of glass-works, 33 -38, 95.        Division of labor, in letter-writing, 176.
Ceiling, of a ship, 215, 219.            Dogs in coal mines, 157, 158.
Chamber, a miner's, 146.                1 Drift, in coal-mining, 121, 141 -146.
Chimney, what makes the draft of, 38; Drowned, how To resuscitate the, 4-8.
a modern contrivance, 39; of glass-  Drowning person, how to rescue, 3.
works, 34, 39, 54..Dry-rot, in ships, 208, 209.
Cinder, in iron-smelting, 194, 197.
Clarence, Mr., introduced, 104; his way
of getting through the world, 108;                        F.
Lawrence's guide, 109
Clay, for glass-pots, 41; how prepared, Fire-damp, 168 -170.
41-43.                                 Flint glass, why so called, 48.
11                                         P




242                               INDEX.
Forefoot, a ship's, 212.                                 K.
Fossils, in coal, 115, 163.
Frame, of a ship, 201, 205.            Keel a ship's, 204, 205; why necessary,
Furnaces, glass, 35, 54; window-glass,   236, 231.
89; blast, 181-188, 195, 196.        Keelson, a ship's, 209.
Knee, a ship's, 202, 208.
G.
Gaffer, why so called, 30, 31.
Gangway. See Drift.                    Lackawanna, Valley of, 101,102.
Gases, in mines, 168-170.              Lackawanna Iron-Works, 180.
Glass, flint and green, 35; what made  Lamp, safety, 168, 169.
of, 48 -50  how " decolorized " 50 * Lamp-chimney, how blown, 51-60.
blown, 52 - 69; moulded, 70, 71; Lamp-globe, how blown, 61.
pressed, 71, 72; plated, 73, 74; an- Launch, of a ship, 238-240.
nealed, 75, 77; cutting, 78 - 81; en- Lawrence, at the pond-side, 1; learning
graved, 82 - 84; difference between    to swim, 2, 3; plays part of drowned
blown and pressed, 84, 85; how col    boy 5- 8; rescues Jake Thomes, 10,
ored, 85, 86; hopw silvered, 86-88-   11,13; among the ice-cutters, 14-26;
curiosities of, 94 -96.         88     among the glass-makers, 27 - 96; jourGlass beads, how made, 69.               ney to the coal regions, 101; makes
Glass-blowers, antics of, 52, 53; super-   the acquaintanceofMr.Clarence,106;
stitious, 53.                          among  the coal-miners, 109 - 173;
Glass bugles, how made, 69.              among the iron-men, 181 -198; among
Glass-furnaces, 35, 54.                  the ship-builders, 199-240.
Glass jar, how made, 61, 62.           Leers, for annealing glass, 54, 75 - 77.
Letter-writing under difficulties, 174Glass-makers, a class by themselves, 31  177; Dr. Dean's idea of, 199.
ancient, 93.
Glass-making, history of, in America, Lime, in glass-making, 49.
93.                                    197.
93.                               a, Limestone, in iron-smelting, 181, 185,
Glass-works, 28 - 96.
Gold, " eaten up," 85, 86, 95.
Great Eastern steamship, 223, 238.
M.
H.                   Mast, of ship, now made. 235.
Melting-pots, glass, 35; how made, 40,
43- 46.
Homctopathic vials, how made, 68.      Mercury in thermometer tubes, 68, 69.
Hot blast, theory of, 186.             Mica. ancient substitute for windowglass, 93.
Miners. See Coal-miners.
I.                   Mining engineer, work of, 119, 120.
Mirrors, how silvered, 92.
Ice, forms slowly under snow, and why, Model, of ship, 225, 226, 230.
15; how cleared of snow for cutting, " Monkey rail " of ship, 217.
15-17; catching pickerel through, Moulding-loft, 221.
17; how cut, 18 -26; has a "grain,"  Moulds, a ship's, 201, 202, 221.
23.                                  Muff, the dog, introduced, 104.
Inkstand, glass, how made, 70, 71.     Mules, in coal mine, 158, 159, 160.
Iron-furnaces, how charged, 183
Iron ships, weight of, 222; cost of, 223;
compared with  wooden, 223; how                        N.
made, 223.
Iron-smelting, theory of, 195-197.     Navy-yard, 204.
Iron-works, 181 -188, 195, 196.
0.
J.                   Oak timber, in ship-building, 20;1.
Owen, introduced, 131; guide to coal
Jake Thomes, rescue of, 9- 13.           mine, 133; lost in coal mine, 171,172.




INDEX.                               243
Oxide of manganese, 50.                Ship-auger, modelled  from  a  waterOxide of zinc, 50.                       worm, 233.
Shipwright, 221.
Ship-yard, 200.
P.                    Shoe, of a ship, 209, 210.
Silica, in glass, 49.
Pearlash, in glass-making, 51.         Skin, a ship's, 213.
Penn, the " Pa " of State, 175.        Slag, 194, 197.
Pig, iron, 189, 192, 193.              Slate, imprinted with leaves and bark,
Pin-rail, a ship's, 217.                 113 -116.
Pittsburg, glass-factories in, 89.     Slope, in coal mine, 121, 170.
Plate-glass, how made, 92.             Slurry. 51.
Preserve plate, glass, how made, 72.   Soda, in glass, 51.
Spars, of vessels, 233, 234, 240.
Steam, power of, 143, 144.
Stem-post, 212.
Stern-post, 207.
Rag-pickers; at work, 47.
Rats, in coal mines, 158, 159 171, 172.   Taffral, 217.
Red-lead, in glass-nmaking, 49.        Thermometers, how made, 65 - 69.
Rigging of vessels, 233 -236; Roaring  Tiller, 211.
Brook at night, 184.                 Timbers, in a ship, 201, 202, 206, 207,
Ruby cup, glass, how made, 73, 74.       222.
Rudder-ot 0, 211.                       Tonnage, of v&ssels, 224, 225.
Rudder-post, 207, 211.                  Tunnel, in coal mine, 162.
S.                                     U.
Safety-lamp, 168. 169.                 Uncle, Lawrence's, See Dean.
Sails, of vessels, 234, 235.
Salamander, story of, 53.
Salt, in ship-building, 208, 219.                        V.
Saltpetre, in glass, 51.
Sand, in glass-making, 48, 49.         Vials, how made, 68.
Sandiver, 55.
Scranton, Pa., 99, 101, 109, 110, 124.
Shaft. See Coal-shafb.                                   W.
Sheathing, of vessels, 233.
Sheer, of a ship, 215.                 Water, in coal mines, 160, 161, 164 -166;
Ship howbuilt 204-213; how steered,   weight of 225.
211; how modelled. 221, 225 - 229; Water-ways, a ship's, 217.
proportions of, 229,-230; howsheathed, Water-worms, in ships, 232, 233.
233; full-rigged, drawing of, 235; how  Window-glass, how made, 58, 89, 91.
launched, 237 - 239.                 Wineglass, how made, 62 - 64.
THE END.
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.