Chapter XII: Part THE SECOND: Noon (8)

"An Indian belonging to the Menomonie, having taken a rattlesnake, found means to tame it; and when he had done this treated it as a deity, calling it his great father, and carrying it with him in a box wherever he went. This he had done for several summers, when Mons. Pinnisance accidentally met with him at this carrying place, just as he was setting off for a winter's hunt. The French gentleman was surprised one day to see the Indian place the box which contained his god on the ground, and opening the door, give him his liberty; telling him, while he did it, to be sure and return by the time he himself should come back, which was to be in the month of May following. As this was but October, Monsieur told the Indian, whose simplicity astonished him, that he fancied he might wait long enough, when May arrived, for the arrival of his great father. The Indian was so confident of his creature's obedience, that he offered to lay the Frenchman a wager of two gallons of rum, that at the time appointed he would come and crawl into his box. This was agreed on, and the second week in May following fixed for the determination of the wager. At that period they both met there again, when the Indian set down his box, and called for his great father. The snake heard him not; and the time being now expired, he acknowledged that he had lost. However, without seeming to be discouraged, he offered to double the bet if his father came not within two days more. This was further agreed on; when, behold, on the second day, about one o'clock the snake arrived, and of his own accord crawled into the box, which was placed ready for him. The French gentleman vouched for the truth of this story, and from the accounts I have often received of the docility of those creatures, I see no reason to doubt its veracity."

THE WATCHER.--A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE.

In a dark room, in a ruined and wretched house, in one of the most filthy districts of a great city, a mother sat watching her sleeping babe. The infant was lying on a hard pallet on the floor, and the mother was sitting beside it on a broken chair, plying her needle with eager haste, and occasionally pausing to look down at her babe or to kiss it as it lay asleep. The child was pale and sickly, and in the close offensive air of the room it seemed to breathe painfully and to inhale, with every pulse of its tender heart, the insidious principles of death and dissolution. But not less pale and wan was the mother, who sat there watching; her features wore that blanched, unearthly hue, and that strange upward light was playing in her eyes, which spoke but too plainly that death was breathing on her. The room was lonely--very lonely--for there were no pictures to adorn its walls, scarcely any articles of common domestic use within it; it was bare, almost unfurnished, dismal, and cold. The mother was engaged in making shirts, and the price which she received for them averaged two-pence-halfpenny each; and it is said that by extraordinary exertions, for twenty hours out of twenty-four, the sum of three shillings may be earned weekly at such labor. Well, the pale, care-worn, suffering mother continued to stitch, stitch, anxiously from hour to hour, leaving off now and then to take her dying baby in her arms and to press it fondly to her breast, until the tide of her heart's affection came stealing forth in tears; and recollecting that the next meal for herself and child must be earned by the continued labor of her jaded hands, she placed the infant on its bed, and again resumed her work.

Thus many hours had passed in a silence broken only by the low moaning of the child, as it turned to and fro in the feeble expression of long-continued anguish, and the deep sighs of the mother as she gazed anxiously upon its fevered face, and saw the stamp of want and misery there in an expression akin to the imbecility of years. At length the babe awoke, and the mother took it tenderly into her arms; she pressed it to her breast and kissed the cold dew from its forehead. And now she began to prepare her humble meal, she placed a few sticks of wood in the stove and lighted them, and placed an old broken kettle half filled with water upon them; and then arranged two cups and saucers on a small tray, and took a portion of a loaf from a shelf above. While waiting for the water to boil she gave her child some food; and she had scarcely begun to do this when a heavy and unsteady step was heard upon the threshold; her heart leaped with fear, and she trembled like a moonlight shadow. A creature somewhat in the semblance of a man staggered into the room, and threw himself down upon the pallet where the child had just been sleeping.

"Charles, Charles, do not, for God's sake, treat me thus," said the mother of the child, and she sobbed loudly, and was steeped in tears.

The man scowled upon her from beneath the broken brim of a slouched hat, and in a low fiendish growl, cursed her. His clothes had been respectable in their time, but now were tattered and slovenly, and his face wore the savage wildness and vacancy of long-continued dissipation.

"I came home to ask you for money, so give me what you've got, and let me go, for I haven't done drinking yet," said he, while the devil-like glare of his eyes seemed to pierce the poor mother to the soul.

"I spent my last penny to buy my child some food, I know not where to get another; you have never wanted a meal while I could work, and my poor fingers are wasted to the bone by midnight labor and the want of bread, and my poor child is wasting away before my face, while you, forgetting all the ties that bind a father to his offspring, or a husband to his wife, take the very bread from me and my babe, to waste it in drunkenness; oh, Charles, you loved me once, but you are killing me now, and my poor dear child."

"You howling, canting hypocrite, give me some money and let me go," bawled the intoxicated brute, and with a sweep of his hand, as he sat upon the child's bed, he overturned the table and scattered the miserable meal upon the floor. The heart-broken wife rushed with her babe to the opposite end of the room, and cowered down in fear. "Do you hear, or do you want me to murder you?" and he rose from where he sat and reeled toward her; shrinking and shivering as she bent over her babe, she pressed its almost lifeless body to her heart, and when he stood above her, she looked up in his face in the agony of despair, and implored, in the mute utterance of her tear-worn eyes, for mercy. But he did not strike her, although she was indeed well used to that, but he put out his hand and taking from her bosom a locket, which had been a dear sister's gift, and the last thing left her but her babe and death, staggered to the door, and, after looking back with a menacing and brutal expression of his savage features, left her. Although he was gone she moved not, but sat wailing like a dove whose nest has been bereft of that which made life dear, and sobbing loudly in her grief she looked upon her child, and saw the tokens of pain and want upon its meagre face, and could feel the throbbing of its little heart becoming more and more feeble, from hour to hour, as the shadow of its life was waning.

And night came, and she laid her child down to rest, and again sat working and watching. She kissed it when its low cry startled her in the midnight silence, and hushed it again to sleep, for it wanted food and that she had not. The morning came, but it was still night to her, and the darkness of her woe sat hovering over her frail soul like the shadow of a great but silent misery. She hurried on in the delirium of extreme weakness that she might complete the wretched work she had, and get food for her famished child. Intense suffering, long watching, hunger, cold, and cruelty had blanched a cheek which had been more fair than snow, and had carved wrinkles, like those of age, upon a youthful brow; death hovered over her like a ghastly shadow, not to her--as to those in comfort--terrible, but welcome. And thus from hour to hour, and from day to day, that mother labored for her lonely child, while he, whose heart should have beat with the devotion of love for her whom he had sworn to cherish, and whose hand should have been ever ready to defend her, deeming nothing too severe, nothing too difficult, which could bring food and comfort to a woman's constant heart, came only to rob her of her last morsel, and to add fresh agonies to her almost withered soul by imprecations and curses.

One morning, after she had been toiling long in cold and hunger, she became too weak to labor more, and nature faltered. She stooped to kiss her babe and to ask a blessing on its head from Him whose benedictions come even to the sorrowful and needy, and as she bent down above its little shadowy form, her sorrows overwhelmed her, and she fell down beside her child and fainted. With none to aid and soothe her--with none to nourish her in her distress of heart, and no kind hand to minister to the poor watcher in that hour of affliction, she lay in that sweet peace which comes to the aching heart when it can for a time forget its sorrows; and better too, perhaps, for her, for her babe was dying, and in the unconsciousness of temporary death, she knew it not.

She awoke at last, for even the forgetfulness so dear to the wounded spirit will have an end, and the grim bitter realities become palpable once more; and as consciousness returned she was startled from her partial dream by the icy chill which fell upon her when she touched her child. She shrieked wildly, and fell upon her face in the maddening agony of despair, "my child, my child, oh, my child!" she cried, and tore her hair in frenzy. Now she became more calm, and turned round to look upon the babe, whose soul had passed into that better sleep from which there is no waking. She kissed its cold wasted form, and bathed its little marble face with her scalding tears.

"Oh, my child," she sobbed, "my poor child, murdered by its father's hand, the victim of his cruelty; oh, Father of all, Father of the wicked and good, take my poor babe to thy fostering bosom, and let me die too, for my last hope is gone, the last link of my heart's affection is broken; Father of mercies, listen to the supplications of a childless mother!"

That step! and the blood goes back to her heart like an icy flood, and every pulse is withered, as with a bleak and desolating frost; she holds her breath, and with her dead child in her arms, crouches down in the corner on the floor, and in the silence of despair and terror asks her God to bless and protect her, and to soften his heart in such an awful moment as this. He came to the threshold of the room, and fell prostrate on the floor as he attempted to approach her; he was too much intoxicated to rise, and there he lay muttering, in broken and inarticulate words, the most horrible oaths and imprecations. The mother spake not, for although, even then she could have prayed for him in her heart, and bless him with her tongue; ay, and still labor for him with her hands, if by such she could win back the old love which had made her youthful hours glad, and which had spread the rosy atmosphere of hope before her; but which was now a thing of silent memory, of sadness, and of tears.

Thus passed away the morning, and at noon the drunkard arose from where he lay, and again demanded what money she had; she gave him a few halfpence from her pocket, and he snatched them from her and departed.

To know that he had gone to procure the poison on which he fed, with this last remnant of the midnight toil, and when his child lay dead within its mother's arms; to know that for the veriest morsel she must toil again, sleepless and famished, and with the withered blossom of her heart's broken hope beside her; to know that the last office of affection, the burial of the child, must be performed by those who cared for neither her nor it, and who would desecrate, by the vile touch of parochial charity, that which had been more dear to her than her own life; to know that all her joys were wasted now, and that she still lived to hear him curse her in the very place where death had so lately been; and that although she sat before him with the sleeping infant in her arms, while he was too brutalized by drink to know that that sleep was one from which it would never more awake, and that her own terror made her speechless when she would have told him; all this was a torrent of sorrow, before whose overbearing force her wintered heart gave way, and she sank down upon the floor, with her dead babe in her arms, senseless.

Sleep came upon her like a poppy spell, and wafted her silent, soul to sweeter worlds. Far away from her cold and solitary room, far away from hunger, wretchedness, and tears; far away from the keen tortures of maternal sorrow and the despair of withered love, her spirit wandered in that peaceful dream. From earth, as from a wilderness of ashes, her willing spirit went upon its upward flight, ascending and ascending. It neared the blue and shining arch above, and clapped its wings for joy, and felt within it the renovated bliss of innocent and unchanging beauty. It felt the calming influence of soft music swelling around it like sunbright waves upon a summer sea; it saw sweet spots and green peaceful valleys lying in the rosy light of heaven, as clouds at evening lie folded up in sleep. On and on her spirit went in calm and holy majesty, amid the shadowy beauty of that pleasant land. It seemed to bathe in bliss amid bright galaxies of living and rejoicing worlds, and to embrace happiness as its long-sought boon. Through flowery pastures, and falling waters, perfumed gardens, and star-lighted solitudes where the soul of music dwelt and lived amid the sweet echoes of her seraph songs, that mother's new-born soul wandered in its freedom, forgetting all the pangs and tears it had so lately known. Now it passed floating islands of glittering beauty where troops of cherubim were worshiping their God; and from the midst of a soft bed of twilight flowers arose an angel host of babes, soaring in their wantonness of joy to higher regions of the azure air, and singing their simple songs in harmony together. From all the gleaming lights afar came dulcet harpings of angelic wings, and all things in that sweet dream-land of beauty told of the joy which falls upon the virtuous soul. The spirit of the mother, dazzled and amazed till now, awoke from its trance of wonder, and cried aloud "my child, my child, and my husband, where, where are they?" and she sank upon a gleaming bed of purpled blooms, and from the odorous sighing of the lute-toned air the voice of her child came gladly in reply. And now a joyous troop of star-light seraphs sailed toward her, like a snowy cloud, and in the midst she sees her darling babe, clapping its little hands in laughing glee, and overjoyed once more to meet her. Oh, what bliss is like the feeling of a mother, when her trusting heart is gladdened by the return of a child whom she deemed was lost; and if such joy awake within the soul amid all the harsh realities of earth, how much more so in the spirit's home, where nothing but the peaceful thought can live, and all earth's grief is banished? It was her own babe, the bud of hope she nursed and tended in the dark winter of her earthly sorrow, now wearing the same smile which gladdened her amid the gloom, but holier, fairer, and freed from all the traces of want and suffering. The spirits of the mother and the babe embraced each other in the wild joy of this happy meeting, and the mother's spirit knelt before the heaven-built temple of light which arched above, and offered the incense of its prayers for him whose wickedness of heart had steeped her earthly days in bitterness; but who was yet to her the token of a youthful hope, and the living memory of a trusting love. Her earnest spirit, in the gush of its awakened affection for the child of her bosom, called upon its God to have mercy upon him, and to snatch his soul from the blackness of its guilt and the impending terrors of destruction. And the prayer went upward, and the angels sung.

* * * * *

The drunkard staggered to the wretched home, and reeling into the silent room gazed upon the wife and child. They spoke not, moved not; he stooped to touch, but recoiled in horror, for both of them were dead. The mother, in her sweet dream, had glided into the blissful evening land, and he, the destroyer of a wife and child, now felt in all the piercing agony of sin and shame, the scorpion stings of conscience. He fell upon his knees and prayed for mercy! His withering soul seemed struggling within him, and he gasped for breath. He had wandered into wicked paths, he had blighted a gentle heart by cruelty and neglect, he had wasted his own child's meal in drunkenness and villainy, while it lay on its mother's breast perishing for want of food. He felt all the terrors of remorse, and hell seemed gaping beneath him! He arose and wept, and the first tear he shed was carried by invisible hands upward to that world of peace, as a sacrifice of penitence to the kneeling spirit of a mother. He wandered away in silence, and where he went were the falling tears which spoke, in accents eloquent and true, the silent utterance of a repentant heart.

PLATE GLASS--WHAT IT IS, AND HOW IT IS MADE.

Two other gentlemen occupied the railway carriage, which, on a gusty day in December, was conveying us toward Gravesend, _via_ Blackwall. One wore spectacles, by the aid of which he was perusing a small pocket edition of his favorite author. No sound escaped his lips; yet, his under-jaw and his disengaged hand moved with the solemn regularity of an orator emitting periods of tremendous euphony. Presently, his delight exploded in a loud shutting up of the book and an enthusiastic appeal to us in favor of the writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

"What, for example, can be finer, gentlemen, than his account of the origin of glass-making; in which, being a drysalter, I take a particular interest. Let me read the passage to you!"

"But the noise of the train--"

"Sir, I can drown that."

The tone in which the Johnsonian "Sir" was let off, left no doubt of it. Though a small man, the reader was what his favorite writer would have denominated a Stentor, and what the modern school would call a Stunner. When he re-opened the book and began to read, the words smote the ear as if they had been shot out of the mouth of a cannon. To give additional effect to the rounded periods of his author, he waved his arm in the air at each turn of a sentence, as if it had been a circular saw. "Who," he recited, "when he saw the first sand or ashes, by a casual intenseness of heat, melted into a metalline form, rugged with excrescences, and clouded with impurities, would have imagined, that in this shapeless lump lay concealed so many conveniences of life, as would in time constitute a great part of the happiness of the world? Yet by some such fortuitous liquefaction was mankind taught to procure a body at once in a high degree solid and transparent, which might admit the light of the sun, and exclude the violence of the wind: which might extend the light of the philosopher to new ranges of existence, and charm him at one time with the unbounded extent of the material creation, and at another with the endless subordination of animal life; and, what is yet of more importance, might supply the decays of nature, and succor old age with subsidiary sight. Thus was the first artificer in glass employed, though without his own knowledge or expectation. He was facilitating and prolonging the enjoyment of light, enlarging the avenues of science, and conferring the highest and most lasting pleasures; he was enabling the student to contemplate nature, and the beauty to behold herself. This passion for--"

"Blackwall, gents! Blackwall, ladies! Boat for Gravesend!" We should, unquestionably, have been favored with the rest of the ninth number of the "Rambler" (in which the fore-going passage occurs) but for these announcements.

"There is one thing, however," said the little man with the loud voice, as we walked from the platform to the pier, "which I can _not_ understand. What does the illustrious essayist mean by the 'fortuitous liquefaction' of the sand and ashes. Was glass found out by accident?"

Luckily, a ray of school-day classics enlightened a corner of our memory, and we mentioned the well-known story, in Pliny, that some Phoenician merchants, carrying saltpetre to the mouth of the river Belus, went ashore; and, placing some lumps of the cargo under their kettles to cook food, the heat of the fire fused the nitre, which ran among the sand of the shore. The cooks finding this union to produce a translucent substance, discovered the art of making glass.

"That," said our other companion, holding his hat to prevent the wind from blowing it aboard the Gravesend steamer (which was not to start for ten minutes), "has been the stock tale of all writers on the subject, from Pliny down to Ure; but, Sir Gardiner Wilkinson has put it out of the power of future authors to repeat it. That indefatigable haunter of Egyptian tombs discovered minute representations of glass-blowing, painted on tombs of the time of Orsirtasin the First, some sixteen hundred years before the date of Pliny's story. Indeed, a glass bead, bearing the name of a king who lived fifteen hundred years before Christ, was found in another tomb by Captain Henvey, the specific gravity of which is precisely that of English crown-glass."

"You seem to know all about it!" exclaimed the loud-voiced man.

"Being a director of a plate-glass company I have made it my business to learn all that books could teach me on the subject."

"I should like to see glass made," said the vociferous admirer of Dr. Johnson, "especially plate-glass."

To this, the other replied, with ready politeness, "If your wish be very strong, and you have an hour to spare, I shall be happy to show you the works to which I am going--those of the Thames Plate Glass Company. They are close by."

"The fact is," was the reply, "Mrs. Bossle (I'm sorry to say Mrs. Bossle is an invalid) expects me down to Gravesend to tea; but an hour won't matter much."

"And you, sir?" said the civil gentleman, addressing me.

My desire was equally strong, and the next hour equally my own; for, as the friend, whom a negligent public had driven to emigration, was not to sail until the next morning, it did not much matter whether I took my last farewell of him at Gravesend early or late that evening.

Tracking our guide through dock gates, over narrow drawbridges, along quays; now, dodging the rigging of ships; now, tripping over cables, made "taut" to rings; now falling foul of warping-posts (for it was getting dusk); one minute, leaping over deserted timber; the next, doubling stray casks; the next, winding among the strangest ruins of dismantled steamboats, for which a regular hospital seemed established in that region of mud and water; then, emerging into dirty lanes, and turning the corners of roofless houses; we finished an exciting game of Follow-my-Leader, at a pair of tall gates. One of these admitted us into the precincts of the southernmost of the six manufactories of plate glass existing in this country.

The first ingredient in making glass, to which we were introduced, was contained in a goodly row of barrels in full tap, marked with the esteemed brand of "Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, and Co." It is the well-known fermented extract of malt and hops, which is, it seems, nearly as necessary to the production of good plate glass, as flint and soda. To liquefy the latter materials by means of fire is, in truth, dry work; and our _cicerone_ explained, that seven pints per day, per man, of Messrs. Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, and Company's Entire, has been found, after years of thirsty experience, to be absolutely necessary to moisten human clay, hourly baked at the mouths of blazing furnaces. These furnaces emit a heat more intense than the most perspiring imagination can conceive, or the stanchest thermometer indicate. An attempt to ascertain the degree of heat was once made: a pyrometer (a thermometer of the superlative degree, or "fire-measurer"), was applied to the throat of a furnace--for every furnace has its mouth, its throat, and its flaming tongues; but the wretched instrument, after five minutes' scorching, made an expiring effort to mark _thirteen hundred degrees above boiling point_, cracked, was shivered into bits, and was finally swallowed up by the insatiable element whose proceedings it had presumptuously attempted to register.

Having, by this time, crossed a yard, we stood on the edge of a foul creek of the Thames, so horribly slimy, that a crocodile or an alligator, or any scaly monster of the Saurian period, seemed much more likely to be encountered in such a neighborhood than the beautiful substance that makes our modern rooms so glittering and bright; our streets so dazzling, and our windows at once so radiant and so strong.

"In order to understand our process thoroughly," said the obliging director of the seven acres of factory and the four hundred operatives we had come to see, "we must begin with the beginning. This," picking up from a heap a handful of the finest of fine sand--the glittering pounce, in fact, with which our forefathers spangled their writing--"is the basis of all glass. It is the whitest, most highly pulverized flint sand that can be procured. This comes from Lynn, on the coast of Norfolk. Its mixture with the other materials is a secret, even to us. We give the man who possesses it a handsome salary for exercising his mystery."

"A secret!" cried Mr. Bossle. "Every body, I thought, knew--at least every body in the drysaltery line understands--what glass is made of. Why, I can repeat the recipe given by Dr. Ure, from memory: To every hundred parts of materials, there are of pure sand forty-three parts; soda twenty-five and a half (by-the-by, we have some capital carbonate coming forward _ex_ Mary Anne, that we could let you have at a low figure); quick-lime, four; nitre, one and a half; broken glass, twenty-six. The doctor calculates, if I remember rightly, that of the whole, thirty parts of this compound run to waste in fusing so that seventy per cent. becomes, on an average, glass."

"That is all very true," was the answer; "but our glass is, we flatter ourselves, of a much better color, and stands annealing better, than that made from the ordinary admixture: from which, however, ours differs but little--only, I think, in the relative quantities. In that lies the secret."

Mr. Bossle expressed great anxiety to behold an individual who was possessed of a secret worth several hundreds a year, paid weekly. Romance invariably associates itself with mystery; and we are not quite sure from the awful way in which Mr. Bossle dropped his voice to a soft whisper, that he did not expect, on entering the chamber of pre-vitrified chemicals, to find an individual clothed like the hermit in "Rasselas," or mingling his "elements" with the wand of Hermes Trismegistus. He looked as if he could hardly believe his spectacles, when he saw a plain, respectable-looking, indifferent-tempered man, not a whit more awe-inspiring--or more dusty--than a miller on a market-day.

We do not insinuate that Mr. Bossle endeavored to "pluck out the heart of the mystery," though nothing seemed to escape the focus of his spectacles. But, although here lay, in separate heaps, the sand and soda and saltpetre and lime and _cullet_, or broken glass; while there, in a huge trough, those ingredients were mixed up (like "broken" in a confectioner's shop) ready to be pushed through a trap to fill the crucible or stomach of the furnace; yet, despite Mr. Bossle's sly investigations, and sonorous inquiries, he left the hall of "elements" as wise as he had entered.

Passing through a variety of places in which the trituration, purification, and cleaning of the materials were going on, we mounted to an upper story that reminded us of the yard in which the cunning captain of the Forty Thieves, when he was disguised as an Oil Merchant, stored his pretended merchandise. It was filled with rows and rows of great clay jars, something like barrels with their heads knocked out. Each had, instead of a hoop, an indented band round the middle, for the insertion of the iron gear by which they were, in due time, to be lifted into and out of the raging furnaces. There were two sizes; one about four feet deep, and three feet six inches in diameter, technically called "pots," and destined to receive the materials for their first sweltering. The smaller vessels (_cuvettes_) were of the same shape, but only two feet six inches deep, and two feet in diameter. These were the crucibles in which the vitreous compound was to be fired a second time, ready for casting. These vessels are _built_--for that is really the process; and it requires a twelvemonth to build one, so gradually must it settle and harden, and so slowly must it be pieced together, or the furnace would immediately destroy it--of Stourbridge clay, which is the purest and least silicious yet discovered.

"We have now," said Mr. Bossle, wiping his spectacles, and gathering himself up for a loud Johnsonian period, "seen the raw materials ready to be submitted to the action of the fire, and we have also beheld the vessels in which the vitrification is to take place. Let us therefore witness the actual liquefaction."

In obedience to this grandiloquent wish, we were shown into the hall of furnaces.

It was a sight indeed. A lofty and enormous hall, with windows in the high walls open to the rainy night. Down the centre, a fearful row of roaring furnaces, white-hot: to look at which, even through the chinks in the iron screens before them, and masked, seemed to scorch and splinter the very breath within one. At right angles with this hall, another, an immense building in itself, with unearthly-looking instruments hanging on the walls, and strewn about, as if for some diabolical cookery. In dark corners, where the furnaces redly glimmered on them, from time to time, knots of swarthy muscular men, with nets drawn over their faces, or hanging from their hats: confusedly grouped, wildly dressed, scarcely heard to mutter amid the roaring of the fires, and mysteriously coming and going, like picturesque shadows, cast by the terrific glare. Such figures there must have been, once upon a time, in some such scene, ministering to the worship of fire, and feeding the altars of the cruel god with victims. Figures not dissimilar, alas! there have been, torturing and burning, even in our Saviour's name. But, happily those bitter days are gone. The senseless world is tortured for the good of man, and made to take new forms in his service. Upon the rack, we stretch the ores and metals of the earth, and not the image of the Creator of all. These fires and figures are the agents of civilization, and not of deadly persecution and black murder. Burn fires and welcome! making a light in England that shall not be quenched by all the monkish dreamers in the world!

We were aroused by a sensation like the sudden application of a hot mask to the countenance. As we instinctively placed a hand over our face to ascertain how much of the skin was peeling off, our cool informant announced that the furnace over against us had been opened to perform the _tréjetage_, or ladling of the liquid _pot à feu_ from the large pots into the smaller ones. "I must premise," he said, "that one-third of the raw materials, as put together by our secret friend, are first thrown in; and when that is melted, one-third more; on that being fused, the last third is added. The mouth of the furnace is then closed, and an enormous heat kept up by the _tiseur_ or stoker (all our terms are taken from the French), during sixteen hours. That time having now elapsed, in the case of the flaming pot before you, the furnace is opened. The man with the long ladle thrusts it, you perceive, into the pot, takes out a ladleful, and, by the assistance of two companions, throws the vitrified dough upon an iron anvil. The other two men turn it over and over, spread it upon the inverted flat-iron, and twitch out, with pliers, any speck or impurity; it is tossed again into the ladle, and thrown into a cuvette in another furnace. When the cuvettes are full, that furnace is stopped up to maintain a roaring heat for another eight hours; and, in the language of the men, 'the ceremony is performed.'"

At this moment, the noise burst forth from the middle of the enormous shed, of several beats of a gong: so loud, that they even drowned the thundering inquiries with which Mr. Bossle was teasing one of the "teasers." In an instant the men hastened to a focus, like giants in a Christmas pantomime about to perform some wonderful conjuration; and not a whisper was heard.

"Aha!" exclaimed the director, "they are going to cast. This way, gentlemen!"

The kitchen in which the Ogre threatened to cook Jack and his seven brothers could not have been half so formidable an apartment as the enormous cuisine into which we were led. One end was occupied with a row of awful ovens; in the midst, stood a stupendous iron table; and upon it lay a rolling-pin, so big, that it could only be likened to half-a-dozen garden-rollers joined together at their ends. Above, was an iron crane or gallows to lift the enormous messes of red-hot gruel, thick and slab, which were now to be brought from the furnaces.

"Stand clear!" A huge basin, white with heat, approaches, on a sort of iron hurley; at one end of which sits, triumphant, a salamander, in human form, to balance the Plutonian mass, as it approaches on its wheeled car--playing with it--a game of see-saw. It stops at the foot of the iron gallows. Mr. Bossle approaches to see what it is, and discovers it to be a cuvette filled with molten glass, glowing from the fiery furnace. What is that man doing with a glazed mask before his face? "Why, if you will believe me," exclaims Mr. Bossle, in the tones of a speaking-trumpet (we are at a prudent distance), "he is ladling off the scum, as composedly as if it were turtle-soup!" Mr. Bossle grows bold, and ventures a little nearer. Rash man! His nose is assuredly scorched; he darts back, and takes off his spectacles, to ascertain how much of the frames are melted. The dreadful pot is lifted by the crane. It is poised immediately over the table; a workman tilts it; and out pours a cataract of molten opal which spreads itself, deliberately, like infernal sweet-stuff, over the iron table; which is spilled and slopped about, in a crowd of men, and touches nobody. "And has touched nobody since last year, when one poor fellow got the large shoes he wore, filled with white-hot glass." Then the great rolling-pin begins to "roll it out."

But, those two men, narrowly inspecting every inch of the red hot sheet as the roller approaches it--is their skin salamandrine? are their eyes fire-proof?

"They are looking," we are told, "for any accidental impurity that may be still intruding in the vitrifaction, and, if they can tear it out with their long pincers before the roller has passed over it, they are rewarded. From the shape these specks assume in being torn away, they are called 'tears.'"

When the roller has passed over the table, it leaves a sheet of red-hot glass, measuring some twelve feet by seven.

This translucent confection is pushed upon a flat wooden platform on wheels--sparkling, as it touches the wood, like innumerable diamonds--and is then run rapidly to an oven, there to be baked or annealed. The bed or "sole" of this _carquèse_ is heated to a temperature exactly equal to that of the glass; which is now so much cooled that you can stand within a yard or so of it without fear of scorching off your eyelashes. The pot out of the furnace is cooled, too, out in the rain, and lies there, burst into a hundred pieces. It has been a good one: for it has withstood the fire seventy days.

So rapidly are all these casting operations performed, that, from the moment when Mr. Bossle thought his spectacles were melting off his nose, to the moment when the sheet of glass is shut up in the oven, about five minutes have elapsed. The operations are repeated, until the oven is full of glass-plates.

When eight plates are put into the _carquèse_, it is closed up hermetically; for the tiniest current of cold air would crack the glass. The fire is allowed to go out of its own accord, and the cooling takes place so gradually, that it is not completed until eight days are over. When drawn forth, the glass is that "rough plate" which we see let into the doors of railway stations, and forming half-transparent floors in manufactories. To make it completely transparent for windows and looking-glasses, elaborate processes of grinding and polishing are requisite. They are three in number: roughing down, smoothing, and polishing.

"I perceive," said Mr. Bossle, when he got to the roughing-down room, where steam machinery was violently agitating numerous plates of glass, one upon the other, "that the diamond-cut-diamond principle is adopted."

"Exactly; the under-plate is fastened to a table by plaster-of-paris, and the upper one--quite rough--is violently rubbed by machinery upon it, with water, sand, and other grinding-powders between. The top-plate is then fastened to a table, to rough down another first plate; for the under one is always the smoother."

Then comes the "smoothing." Emery, of graduated degrees of fineness, is used for that purpose. "Until within the last month or so, smoothing could only be done by human labor. The human hand alone was capable of the requisite tenacity, to rub the slippery surfaces over each other; nay, so fine a sense of touch was requisite, that even a man's hand had scarcely sensitiveness enough for the work; hence females were, and still are employed."

As our pains-taking informant spoke, he pushed open a door, and we beheld a sight that made Mr. Bossle wipe his spectacles, and ourselves imagine for a moment that a scene from an Oriental story-book was magically revealed to us; so elegant and graceful were the attitudes into which a bevy of some fifty females--many of them of fine forms and handsome features--were unceasingly throwing themselves. Now, with arms extended, they pushed the plates to one verge of the low tables, stretching their bodies as far as possible; then, drawing back, they stood erect, pulling the plate after them; then, in order to reach the opposite edge of the plane, they stretched themselves out again to an almost horizontal posture. The easy beauty of their movements, the glitter of the glass, the brilliancy of the gas-lights, the bright colors of most of the dresses, formed a _coup d'oeil_ which Mr. Bossle enjoyed a great deal more than Mrs. Bossle, had she been there, might have quite approved.

The fairy scene is soon, however, to disappear. Mr. Blake the ingenious manager of the works, has invented an artificial female hand, by means of which, in combination with peculiar machinery, glass smoothing can be done by steam. The last process is "polishing." This art is practiced in a spacious room glowing with red. Every corner of the busy interior is as rubicund as a Dutch dairy. The floor is red, the walls are red, the ceiling is red, the pillars are red. The machinery is very red. Red glass is attached, by red plaster of Paris, to red movable tables; red rubbers of red felt, heavily weighted with red leads, are driven rapidly over the red surface. Little red boys, redder than the reddest of Red Indians, are continually sprinkling on the reddened glass, the rouge (moistened crocus, peroxyde of iron), which converts the scene of their operations into the most gigantic of known Rubrics.

When polished, the glass is taken away to be "examined." A body of vigilant scrutineers place each sheet between their own eyes and a strong light: wherever a scratch or flaw appears, they make a mark with a piece of wax. If removable, these flaws are polished out by hand. The glass is then ready for the operation which enables "the beauty to behold herself." The spreading of the quicksilver at the back is, however, a separate process, accomplished elsewhere, and performed by a perfectly distinct body of workmen. It is a very simple art.

The manufacture of plate-glass adds another to the thousand and one instances of the advantages of unrestricted and unfettered trade. The great demand occasioned by the immediate fall in price consequent upon the New Tariff, produced this effect on the Thames Plate Glass Works. They now manufacture as much plate-glass per week as was turned out in the days of the Excise, in the same time, by all the works in the country put together. The Excise incubi clogged the operations of the workmen, and prevented every sort of improvement in the manufacture. They put their gauges into the "metal" (or mixed materials) before it was put into the pot. They overhauled the paste when it was taken out of the fire, and they applied their foot-rules to the sheets after the glass was annealed. The duty was collected during the various stages of manufacture half-a-dozen times, and amounted to three hundred per cent. No improvement was according to law, and the exciseman put his veto upon every attempt of the sort. In the old time, the mysterious mixer could not have exercised his secret vocation for the benefit of his employers, and the demand for glass was so small that Mr. Blake's admirable polishing machine would never have been invented. Nor could plate-glass ever have been used for transparent flooring, or for door panels, or for a hundred other purposes, to which it is now advantageously and ornamentally applied.

Thanking the courteous gentlemen who had shown us over the works, we left Mr. Bossle in close consultation with the manager. As, in crossing the yard, we heard the word "soda!" frequently thundered forth, we concluded that the Johnsonian drysalter was endeavoring to complete some transactions in that commodity, which he had previously opened with the director. But, it is not in our power to report decisively on this head, for our attention was directed to two concluding objects.

First, to a row of workmen--the same we had lately seen among the fires and liquid glass--good-humoredly sitting, with perfect composure, on a log of timber, out in the cold and wet, looking at the muddy creek, and drinking their beer, as if there were no such thing as temperature known. Secondly, and lastly, to the narrow passages or caves underneath the furnaces, into which the glowing cinders drop through gratings. These looked, when we descended into them, like a long Egyptian street on a dark night, with a fiery rain falling. In warm divergent chambers and crevices, the boys employed in the works love to hide and sleep, on cold nights. So slept DE FOE'S hero, COLONEL JACK, among the ashes of the glass-house where _he_ worked.

And that, and the river together, made us think of ROBINSON CRUSOE the whole way home, and wonder what all the English boys who have been since his time, and who are yet to be, would have done without him and his desert Island.

"BIRTHS:--MRS. MEEK, OF A SON."--A PLEA FOR INFANTS.

My name is Meek. I am, in fact, Mr. Meek. That son is mine and Mrs. Meek's. When I saw the announcement in the Times, I dropped the paper. I had put it in, myself, and paid for it, but it looked so noble that it overpowered me.

As soon as I could compose my feelings, I took the paper up to Mrs. Meek's bedside. "Maria Jane," said I (I allude to Mrs. Meek), "you are now a public character." We read the review of our child, several times, with feelings of the strongest emotion; and I sent the boy who cleans the boots and shoes, to the office, for fifteen copies. No reduction was made on taking that quantity.

It is scarcely necessary for me to say, that our child had been expected. In fact, it had been expected, with comparative confidence, for some months. Mrs. Meek's mother, who resides with us--of the name of Bigby--had made every preparation for its admission to our circle.

I hope and believe I am a quiet man. I will go further. I _know_ I am a quiet man. My constitution is tremulous, my voice was never loud, and, in point of stature, I have been from infancy, small. I have the greatest respect for Maria Jane's mamma. She is a most remarkable woman. I honor Maria Jane's mamma. In my opinion she would storm a town, single-handed, with a hearth-broom, and carry it. I have never known her to yield any point whatever, to mortal man. She is calculated to terrify the stoutest heart.

Still--but I will not anticipate.

The first intimation I had, of any preparations being in progress, on the part of Maria Jane's mamma, was one afternoon, several months ago. I came home earlier than usual from the office, and, proceeding into the dining-room, found an obstruction behind the door, which prevented it from opening freely. It was an obstruction of a soft nature. On looking in, I found it to be a female.

The female in question stood in the corner behind the door, consuming sherry wine. From the nutty smell of that beverage pervading the apartment, I had no doubt she was consuming a second glassful. She wore a black bonnet of large dimensions, and was copious in figure. The expression of her countenance was severe and discontented. The words to which she gave utterance on seeing me, were these, "Oh, git along with you, sir, if _you_ please; me and Mrs. Bigby don't want no male parties here!"

That female was Mrs. Prodgit.

I immediately withdrew, of course. I was rather hurt, but I made no remark. Whether it was that I showed a lowness of spirits after dinner, in consequence of feeling that I seemed to intrude, I can not say. But, Maria Jane's mamma said to me on her retiring for the night, in a low distinct voice, and with a look of reproach that completely subdued me, "George Meek, Mrs. Prodgit is your wife's nurse!"

I bear no ill-will toward Mrs. Prodgit. Is it likely that I, writing this with tears in my eyes, should be capable of deliberate animosity toward a female, so essential to the welfare of Maria Jane? I am willing to admit that Fate may have been to blame, and not Mrs. Prodgit; but, it is undeniably true, that the latter female brought desolation and devastation into my lowly dwelling.

We were happy after her first appearance; we were sometimes exceedingly so. But, whenever the parlor door was opened, and "Mrs. Prodgit!" announced (and she was very often announced), misery ensued. I could not bear Mrs. Prodgit's look. I felt that I was far from wanted, and had no business to exist in Mrs. Prodgit's presence. Between Maria Jane's mamma, and Mrs. Prodgit, there was a dreadful, secret understanding--a dark mystery and conspiracy, pointing me out as a being to be shunned. I appeared to have done something that was evil. Whenever Mrs. Prodgit called, after dinner, I retired to my dressing-room--where the temperature is very low, indeed, in the wintry time of the year--and sat looking at my frosty breath as it rose before me, and at my rack of boots: a serviceable article of furniture, but never, in my opinion, an exhilarating object. The length of the councils that were held with Mrs. Prodgit, under these circumstances, I will not attempt to describe. I will merely remark, that Mrs. Prodgit always consumed sherry wine while the deliberations were in progress; that they always ended in Maria Jane's being in wretched spirits on the sofa; and that Maria Jane's mamma always received me, when I was recalled, with a look of desolate triumph that too plainly said, "_Now_, George Meek! You see my child, Maria Jane, a ruin, and I hope you are satisfied!"

I pass, generally, over the period that intervened between the day when Mrs. Prodgit entered her protest against male parties, and the ever-memorable midnight when I brought her to my unobtrusive home in a cab, with an extremely large box on the roof, and a bundle, a bandbox, and a basket, between the driver's legs. I have no objection to Mrs. Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby, who I never can forget is the parent of Maria Jane), taking entire possession of my unassuming establishment. In the recesses of my own breast, the thought may linger that a man in possession can not be so dreadful as a woman, and that woman Mrs. Prodgit: but, I ought to bear a good deal, and I hope I can, and do. Huffing and snubbing, prey upon my feelings; but I can bear them without complaint. They may tell in the long run; I may be hustled about, from post to pillar, beyond my strength; nevertheless, I wish to avoid giving rise to words in the family.

The voice of Nature, however, cries aloud in behalf of Augustus George, my infant son. It is for him that I wish to utter a few plaintive household words. I am not at all angry; I am mild--but miserable.

I wish to know why, when my child, Augustus George, was expected in our circle, a provision of pins was made, as if the little stranger were a criminal who was to be put to the torture immediately on his arrival, instead of a holy babe? I wish to know why haste was made to stick those pins all over his innocent form, in every direction? I wish to be informed why light and air are excluded from Augustus George, like poisons? Why, I ask, is my unoffending infant so hedged into a basket-bedstead, with dimity and calico, with miniature sheets and blankets, that I can only hear him snuffle (and no wonder!) deep down under the pink hood of a little bathing-machine, and can never peruse even so much of his lineaments as his nose.

Was I expected to be the father of a French Roll, that the brushes of All Nations were laid in, to rasp Augustus George? Am I to be told that his sensitive skin was ever intended by Nature to have rashes brought out upon it, by the premature and incessant use of those formidable little instruments?