"What are you talking about?" "Ah! it is very sad; innocent and in ignorance, they cannot suspect their terrible fate." suddenly, like toy balloons in the process of inflation, giving him the appearance of having a goodsized apple in each cheek. Immediately upon his "Are you going mad ?" I exclaimed, with some ceasing to blow, they flopped down again. concern for my friend's sanity. "No," he replied; "I am not going mad; I was only thinking of the poor fellows who must take the contents of those bottles some day." The huge furnace was in the middle of the BLUE AND WHITE GLASS VASE. apartment, and its fire, urged by a steam blower, was darting white flame from every opening and crevice. The blowers, clad in scant attire, were hard at work, and, taking the whole crew together, they looked like an amateur brass band in full blast, with cheeks puffed out and eyes distended. The illusion was perfect, except that we were spared from hearing any amateur band music. Our attention was particularly attracted to one old man whose cheeks, from long service, had become stretched, and drooped in a disconsolate, baggy fashion. When he blew, they flopped up We watched this old man until he had blown a number of bottles. The blow-pipe used is a tube of iron about four feet long. Inserting one end of this through an aperture in the furnace, he gave it a turn or two by a deft movement of the wrist, and thus collecting a sufficient quantity of molten glass upon the tube he withdrew it, keeping it in constant motion, as, otherwise, the mass would run off. Then he rolled the lump slowly to and fro on the surface of a marble slab, blowing into it gently until its size was increased and its shape somewhat similar to the mould for which it was intended. From the slab he conveyed it to the mould, still blowing gently and keeping the tube in constant motion. The mould was in two sections, united by a hinge, and a boy sitting at the blower's feet in front of it shut it together with a snap. Then those toy balloons were inflated until I thought the poor old man had blown his entire existence through that iron pipe. This lasted for a few seconds, long enough to bring a pouring rain of perspiration upon the operator's forehead, when the cheeks flopped down again, the strain relaxed, and the deed was accomplished. The little boy calmly broke the bulb of frail glass between the mould and the blower's tube with an instrument for that purpose; and as it shattered with a sharp report he unclosed the mould, when, lo!' a bottle was brought to light with lettering upon it -the names of the manufacturer and his customer. But this was not the end of the process. The bottle was not yet completed. It was still red-hot, but cooling rapidly, and the boy, taking it from the mould, passed it to another boy who rolled it up and down a wooden trough with a paddle until its lurid tinge had departed; then yet another boy came along bearing an iron rod with a cup upon the end of it. This cup just fit the bottle, and he scooped it up. It might here be well to mention as a singular thing, that, although the earthen floor of the building was strewn with pieces of broken glass, with their business ends upward, all of those boy assistants were running about in their bare feet, and it did not seem to make any difference whatNo doubt there is a knack in doing this, or perhaps it is an exemplification of a certain In dian's experience, who, having condemned himself to sleep on a bed of spikes for ten years as an atonement for some evil deed, found upon the expiration of that time that he could secure no rest on the old-fashioned buffalo robes of his ancestors because he missed the spikes! Be that as it may, those boys did not seem to mind it a whit, not even wincing when they alighted upon the 'most enterprising piece of glass. The boy scooped up the bottle with his cup on the end of its iron rod and conveyed it to the other side of the building to a smaller furnace. This fur nace is the larger one in miniature, except that it contains no glass. It has several openings through which the fire juts forth, and these openings are called "glory holes," from the varied color of the flame (red, blue, and white) issuing from them. At the "glory hole" the bottle received its mouth or lip. An operator took it from the boy, handle and all, and thrust the neck to give that porter bottle. Druggists' bottles are treated in like manner, except that the rim is not made so large. appearance we usually see in a A CUT CRYSTAL VASE. into the fire. When it was sufficiently heated, he took it out again, and then, with tools for the purpose, turned down a rim of the glass sufficient From the "glory hole" it was conveyed to its final resting-place, before packing and shipment, to the oven where the bottles are tempered. It is spacious, and will hold a vast number; but they can not fill it entirely, since the bottles nearer the door would then cool too quickly and be likely to break of themselves. "Without this process of annealing," said Mr. Craven, "the glass is so brittle that it would crack and fly to pieces as soon as exposed to cool atmosphere. I have seen bottles explode with great violence from no apparent cause when taken from the works without being annealed. To obviate this, we put them in the oven and start a fire. The fire is fed until a certain temperature be attained, and then left to die out gradually. When perfectly cold, the ware may be taken and packed, but if the oven has not been properly attended to it will sometimes fall to pieces even then." "Does this often occur with you?" I asked. "No, very seldom, though great care must be exercised to avoid it." solution of the metals in the glass. Wine is sometimes put into bottles made of glass wholly unfit for the purpose, and its taste and color are affected "But is there no way of making a glass less in a very few days by the salts produced by the brittle?" "There is; lead, for instance, tends to make glass softer, more fusible, and more lustrous, which fits it for optical and ornamental purposes, corrosion. I have no doubt that serious mischief might occasionally arise from putting up domestic wines, fruit-juices, and the like, in bottles not intended for any such use." necessary for one bottle to make and followed it to its final resting-place in oblivion and ashes, we bade Mr. Craven adieu, and left, with many pleasant impressions of what we had seen. "Now that we are in the glass trade," said Frank, "let us go over to Quinton and look through the window-glass factory there. The proprietor, Mr. George Hires, is a friend of mine, and I know he will be pleased to take us through." "All right," I returned, "I am willing. We may as well get to the bottom of this subject while we are about it; but let us get some dinner first." Pursuing this sugges tion, we returned to the hotel, partook of an excellent repast in which some fish (not of our own catching) held a prominent position, and then were ready to start. It was our intention tool secure a team and drive over; but before we could bod accomplish this, Frank espied a vehicle coming up the road which seemed familiar to him. "There is Mr. Hires now!" he exclaimed. "I will hail him." On learning our desires, Mr. Hires said, "Jump right in, I am going to the works now." The German clay is of a very light-yellow, comes in cubes, and is ground to powder along with some old pots and a modicum of the same clay which has been burned. This mixture is moistened and put in a trough, where an operator kneads it thoroughly. It is done with his bare feet. The trough is filled only at one end with the glutinous mass, much resembling soft putty, and a workman then gets in upon it and slowly works it to the other end with his feet. This is repeated until the whole substance is thoroughly mixed, and when the desired consistency is attained GLASS TASA AND URN. We lost no time in complying with this invita- | the pots may be made. They are formed in moulds, tion, and were soon speeding along over a level road, past fields of growing corn and pleasant views of meadow-land. It took but a short time to reach Quinton and the works of Messrs. Hires & Co., when, alighting from the carriage, we were ready for a tour of inspection. The first place visited was the pot-house. Here the pots are made in which the glass is melted. It is a curious process, and by no means an uninteresting branch of the business. The material used in their construction is a particular kind of clay imported from Germany. "There is an American clay for this purpose," said Mr. Hires, "but it will not do, being unable to stand the fire and liable to break." and when completed are about two and a half feet high, with a diameter of perhaps three feet. "It requires great skill in making these," observed Mr. Hires," and care must be taken that no foreign substances remain in the clay; for if even a hair is permitted to remain, as soon as the pot is used that hair will burn away in the furnace's intense heat, leaving a hole which would be liable to crack the pot and lose the glass." "How many of these pots are there in each furnace?" asked Frank. "Six in some and in others eight. I will show you the interior of one of the furnaces; there is one being rebuilt now." We followed him to another building, 'where workmen were engaged upon a furnace, rebuilding it. It was constructed of fire-clay, and the interior was sufficiently high to admit of our standing upright. The pots were arranged upon "benches," or platforms of fire-clay, on either side opposite to openings in the side of the furnace through which the glass is taken. Having thoroughly examined everything of interest here, we then went to the factories in operation. Scarcely any one to look upon a pane of window-glass would imagine that it had once been round, and yet such is the fact. The furnace stands in the middle of the building, and on either QUINTON, NEW JERSEY. side is a deep pit bridged over by narrow wooden bridges upon which the blower stands at his work. The iron blow-pipe, weighing some fifteen pounds, is thrust into the furnace and about twenty-five pounds of molten glass collected upon the end of it. The blower then swings it below him in the pit and blows into the pipe until, by the power of gravitation and the force of his breath, the glass is elongated and expanded, forming a cylinder with elliptical ends, sometimes four feet long by one foot in diameter. This the blower continues to swing and blow into, until he considers it of a proper shape and thickness, when the ends are cut off and a hollow cylinder alone remains. The cylinder (or "roller," as it is termed) is then split through its entire length, conveyed to the flattening-room, and put into a revolving oven. The oven is circular, with a table of the same form inside which revolves, and the fire is at one end only. The cylinders of glass are placed upon marble slabs in motion, and as they revolve past the fire they become sufficiently heated to allow of their being flattened out with wooden blocks, which purpose is accomplished by men standing at the oven doors and striking the glass as it passes them. When transformed into a sheet of perhaps twelve square feet, it is conveyed to cars further away from the fire and moved slowly up and down until quite cool. Then it is ready for the final process of cutting. In the room devoted to this, experienced hands are busily engaged trimming off all irregular edges and cutting the sheets into various sizes, and soon the crude glass comes forth to market as fine, clear window-panes. On leaving the cutting-room, we returned to the furnace again, and watched the blowers as they swung their unwieldy burden of forty pounds to and fro, imagining them swinging it for hours in succession. "I should think such exertion would be hard on one's muscles," suggested Frank. "No," returned Mr. Hires; "the men get fat on it, and blowing expands the chest and lungs." "Well," said Frank, "it is a wonderful process." "Scarcely so wonderful as the new discovery in glass." "You refer to glass-cloth?" "Yes. This late departure is a near approach to the malleable glass of ancient times, though I was not greatly surprised upon hearing of its manufacture, for I can easily conceive of a very fine glass thread being spun which may become soft and pliable by annealing. I have frequently noticed, when the blowers have been drawing their irons from the fire, that a small portion of hot glass would adhere to the sides of the furnace and thus be drawn out to a considerable length, and so fine as to resemble a cobweb." "Is there any glass-cloth factory in the United States?" I asked. |