Elizabeth Ida Samuel

“ When a man knew as much about molding as Mr. Prescott did, it did seem as if he might have figured that out himself.
Billy looked around for a place where he could hide to watch the door. There wasn’t anybody in sight, so he took plenty of time to decide.
Half-way down the corridor, on the right hand side, was a small closet that had been built up on the floor, by itself, so that Mr. Prescott could have a place to keep his motor clothes. ”

“ Billy, my lad!” said Uncle John, but this time he said it with a smile.
“He was wishing,” said Billy when they overtook the others, “that he could make an iron gate.”
“I’ll confess, here and now,” said Mr. Prescott, “that I myself have had aspirations of that sort.”
“Is iron-work coming in again?” asked Dr. Crandon. “It seems to me that, just lately, I have seen some very beautiful gates.”
“I think so,” answered Mr. Prescott. “There are a few men who seem to have caught the spirit of the old smiths, and to have seen the possibilities in wrought iron. The man who made that gate is one of them. ”

“ The hold of the ship, emptied of its burden, was already beginning to close.
“Beginning to believe in giants, aren’t you?” said Mr. Prescott, as Billy stepped into the car.
“The next giant will be a hungry fellow, and he is very, very tall; so he eats a great deal.”
“An iron-eater, is he?” queried Dr. Crandon.
“We ourselves will have something to eat before we visit him,” said Mr. Prescott, ordering Joseph to drive back to the hotel.
“Mr. Prescott,” said Dr. Crandon, as they sat at table, “is iron ever found in a pure state, like gold, for instance?” ”

“ Prescott, “that perhaps we could manage it for to-morrow.
“Do you think it will be best to have the ladies alone, or shall we invite some men?”
“All the men I have,” said Billy, “are Uncle John and the young doctor and Mr. Thomas Murphy.”
“How would it do,” said Mr. Prescott, “to have just your Aunt Mary and Miss King? Your Uncle John can come at any time. Perhaps you would enjoy Tom more if he were to come alone.”
“I think,” said Billy, reflectively, “that would be a good plan.”
Then Billy told Mr. Prescott what Tom had said about being “nothing and nobody.” ”

“ Billy nodded. Then he said, “Uncle John, do you like to work in the foundry?”
“As to that,” answered Uncle John, taking a sandwich from the pail, “I do. It’s hard work, and it doesn’t make a man rich; but there’s something about making things that keeps a man interested. It takes a pretty good eye and a steady hand to make the molds come out just right. They have to be right, you see; for, if they weren’t, things wouldn’t fit together. I like to think that I’m helping things in the world to go right. ”

“ After a little while Billy said:
“This is too nice a place for a boy that works.”
“See here, Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott, sharply, “we’ll have none of that! That sounds like William Wallace. He was telling you to let me down easy, was he?
“You may just as well understand, both of you,” he went on, firing his words at Billy in the dark, “you may as well understand, once for all, that you can’t tell, simply by looking at the house a man lives in, how hard that man works.
“Sometimes a man works so hard that he doesn’t know what sort of house he does live in. ”

“ Crandon. “That’s what he is! I’m inclined to think that football is a good training place for a captain of industry.”
“It’s all team work,” said John Bradford. “Some do one thing and some another, but without a captain a team can’t win.”
There were times when Uncle John said things that Billy couldn’t understand. He did just then. But Billy knew, by the look that came into Mr. Prescott’s face, that he was very much pleased.
“It takes,” said Dr. Crandon, “two sets of men to make the world move along: those who work with their heads, and those who work with their hands. ”

“ Crandon.
“Now, Billy,” said Mr. Prescott, “you can add the marks on steel to the sizes of hats.”
“I will,” said Billy.
“Look for Birmingham,” said Uncle John. “That’s famous for tools.”
“And Toledo is the place for scissors,” added Mr. Prescott.
“Speaking of marks,” said Dr. Crandon, “I have a sword marked with a crown.”
“A genuine Ferrara!” exclaimed Mr. Prescott. “I’m not going to covet my neighbor’s goods, but if you should ever come across another, please remember that I have only a Damascus and a Toledo.”
“Only!” exclaimed Dr. Crandon. “Those ought to be enough to satisfy any man. ”

“ The great ladle swung forward, for a moment, on its tilting gear, and the men bore away their ladles filled with iron that the great dragon had changed from its own dull gray to the brilliant yellow of gold.
The molds, as they were filled, smoked from all their venting places, till, to his picture, Billy added a place for a battle-field.
By the time that the last molds were filled, some of the men began to take off the wooden frames, and there the iron was, gray again, but, this time, shaped for the use of man.
“See,” said Uncle John, coming to the window, “there are our corn cutters. ”

“ Prescott. “We could sit here till to-morrow morning trying to mention things made of iron, or by means of iron, and then we should be likely to forget many of them.
“If it weren’t for iron and steel implements and tools, men would have hard work to earn a living.
“Dr. Crandon, what does it seem to you that we should lose if we were to lose iron?”
“I’ve been thinking about the arts—surgery, too. We need iron for sculpture, for music, for printing books and papers. We need iron, I should say, for art’s sake.” ”

“ Billy looked at him questioningly.
“That was rather technical, wasn’t it, Billy? You see, I was talking to a technical man. Just between you and me, meteoric iron comes down from the sky, from what we call shooting stars. Sometimes large pieces are found. I suppose that much of it falls into the sea. It is the purest iron that has ever been found.”
“What about magnetic iron?” asked Dr. Crandon. “Where does that come from?”
“At the present time,” answered Mr. Prescott, “most of it comes from Sweden and Norway. It makes the best kind of steel. ”

“ Miss King’s keys kept going—clickety-clickety-click.
There was another side to it. When a good man like Mr. Prescott grows interested in a boy, and, about the time when he feels pretty sure that the boy is all right, something happens, especially about money, the man feels terribly. Then any man is likely to say hard things.
Billy had never even heard about such a thing as “conscience money,” but Mr. Prescott had had an experience with a man whose conscience didn’t work at the right time. ”

“ Might have been blown up in a gopher hole, though, the way my brother was.”
“O-oh!” said Billy.
“Never heard of a gopher hole, I suppose,” continued Tom, settling back in his chair, as though he intended to improve his opportunity to talk.
“That’s one way that they get iron out of a mountain. They make holes straight into a bank. Then they put in sacks of powder, and fire it with a fuse. That loosens the ore so that they can use a steam shovel. Sometimes the men go in too soon.” ”

“ Prescott, “that I am very grateful to Dr. Crandon for telling me about the new electro-magnet that I now have at the mill. I feel very much easier, now, about my workmen’s eyes.”
“Do you mean,” asked Billy, “that thing that you brought home that I thought was a new desk telephone?”
“It does resemble a telephone,” said Dr. Crandon, “only it has a tip instead of a mouthpiece. It’s a great thing for taking bits of steel out of eyes.” ”

“ He made good time on his way back until he reached the bridge, about three minutes’ walk from the mill gate. Then he hit a board that had been put on as a patch, and off came that right sole, so that it went flop—flop—flop.
He had to hold his feet very high in order to walk at all; but he flopped along, until he stubbed his left toe and fell down flat.
The fall was so hard that it threw one roll of dimes out of his pocket. Just as he had stretched out till he almost had the roll, it began to turn over and over, and went off the edge of the bridge into the river. Billy saw it go. ”

“ Then, in delight, he exclaimed:
“The great iron key!”
“The same,” said Mr. Prescott, “and glad enough I am to have it here.
“When I gave Tom the new key, he didn’t look altogether happy. I think the fellow really has enjoyed having the care of this one.”
“I suppose,” said Billy, “that the new one is so small that he will be afraid of losing it. They don’t make such large keys nowadays.”
“That statement may be true in general,” said Mr. Prescott, “but the fact is that the new key is as large as this.”
Then Mr. Prescott stopped talking, but he looked right at Billy. ”

“ If ever a man looked pleased with himself, it was Mr. Henry Marshall Prescott when he gave his motor coat a final pull with both hands, and settled himself on the seat behind Joseph, with Billy between him and his Uncle John. ”

“ You cut out a place, and put in some big timbers to hold up the roof. Then you cut some more, and keep on till you think the roof may fall.
“Then you board that place in, and knock out some pillars, or blow them out, and down comes the iron. Then you put it in a car and push it to a chute, and that loads it on an elevator to be brought up. Sometimes they use electric trams; we used to have to push the cars.”
“It must be very hard work,” said Billy.
“Work, William, usually is hard,” said Thomas Murphy. “Work, underground or above ground, is work, William.” ”

“ Steel is, technically, an alloy of iron and carbon. The point is to have the carbon added to the iron in just the right proportion to make the kind of steel that you may happen to want.
“Bessemer—he was an Englishman, too—invented a converter to put carbon back into iron, that is, to make iron into steel.
“When it comes to telling you about steels, I can’t do that to-day; there are too many kinds.
“You may not know it, William, but you are living in the age of steel. Industry depends on iron, for almost all the tools in the world are made of steel. ”

“ Prescott saw the nurse coming, and he hurried off.
The next time that Uncle John came Billy asked him what had become of the man—“the poor man,” Billy called him.
“That man,” said Uncle John, his mouth growing rather firm, “was found out in his sin.
“He undertook a little too much when he set fire to one end of the mill, and then tried to blow up the main office. That’s too much for one man to do at one time, especially when he’s a man that leaves things around.” ”

“ Things don’t always look the same on both sides of a door. Billy found that out as soon as he was alone in the corridor. But Billy had a theory, though Mr. Prescott may have thought that he was joking, and it was built on so firm a foundation that William Wallace offered, at once, to help him work it out.
Billy hadn’t visited Uncle John that day in the foundry simply for nothing. He had it all figured out in his mind that, as soon as the black-haired man had finished using the key for a pattern, he would put it back in the door ”

“ Prescott,” said Billy, “explained to me about steel, and about forges.”
“When this country was first settled,” said Uncle John, “men had little forges to make iron, just as their wives had spinning wheels to make wool for clothes.
“When they began to make nails—they couldn’t build houses without nails—there was a forge in almost every chimney corner. Children, as well as grown people, used to make nails and tacks in the long winter evenings. People then took nails to the store to pay for things, as in the country they now take eggs.
“That old forge iron was never very pure. ”

“ Some kinds are broken up to be used as foundation for roads; others are granulated by being run into water, and so made into cement. Over in Germany, where the ores are rich in phosphorus, they grind up the linings of the furnace to make phosphatic fertilizers for the farmers.”
“Then,” said Dr. Crandon, “the making of iron involves the use of chemistry, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does,” answered Mr. Prescott; “from the chemical composition of ores to the finished product. We are learning a great deal just now from the chemists about steel alloys. ”

“ But seeing that Billy was too serious, just then, to be put off lightly, Mr. Prescott went on:
“That’s a good question. The geologists tell us, and I suppose that they are right, that there was once a chain of active volcanoes up in the Lake Superior region, and that is why there is so much iron up there now.
“There are some volcanoes in the world now, but the volcanoes that the geologists talk about became extinct—dead, you know—long before the earth was ready for man. Nobody knows how many thousands of years ago. ”