stables and stock yard — a kind of drovers tavern. 

 On some remark of father's to its being close at 

 hand, he said, "Yes, I always like to be close to work." 

 Father told him if there was any opening he would 

 let him know, but instead of leaving the man stood, 

 then said as if talking to himself, "I see no copper- 

 smith's bench or tools." 



Father said, "We have that work done out." 



"Better work, better fits if done here." 



When father told him that there was not work 

 enough to warrant starting a coppersmith's shop the 

 man said he had a tool chest and only some mandrels 

 were wanted and went on to say that the little waste 

 scrap room adjoining the blacksmith shop was big 

 enough for all the copper work and to cast the brass. 

 He was then told that there was but one brass founder 

 in the city that could cast the cylinders and that 

 the air furnace in which the brass was melted was 

 almost as big as the little room by the smith shop. 



"No want air furnace, one big pot, or two next 

 big better — no blow holes to cast up no plugs to put 

 in cylinders (he had seen this being done) — good 

 cylinders, no bad castings. Only one little chimbly, 

 two grates, bricks, one man to help mix cement and 

 I build him in two days." Father seemed a good 

 deal amused at the idea of starting two branches of 

 business with one man in the little scrap room and 

 he said he would have to talk with his partners about 

 it. The man on leaving asked when he should come 

 again and was told any time after tomorrow. 



After he left father said that man was a puzzle to 

 him. He might be a very useful hand or a very 

 mischievous one, but that he was certainly a better 

 educated man than any foreign workman they had 

 ever employed and that he certainly had a good 

 conceit of his ability. 



All the coppersmith work being done at the shop 

 on New St. so far away from the engine shop made it 

 necessary for Joseph Oat to be sent for if any small 

 change was to be made or any brazing or soldering 

 to be done and this was not only troublesome but 

 expensive and to have it done in the shop was cer- 

 tainly more desirable. 



It was not many days before Henri Mogeme was 

 installed in the waste scrap room fitting it up for his 

 copper work. As I have always considered Mogeme's 

 advent at the shops as the most important step in 

 my mechanical education ... I have gone into the 

 detail of the matter. I do not claim a recollection 

 of the various conversations verbatim, but have put 

 it in this shape as the easiest to be understood as well 



as what will follow. I never went into his shop that 

 I did not learn something. He was always ready to 

 answer my questions and mostly with some illustra- 

 tion. I will give an instance: 



I once found him tugging at a bellows with a small 

 crucible on a blacksmith hearth, and I asked him 

 what he was doing. He told me to look on and he 

 would show me. He said he was making solder to 

 braze fine finished brass to copper without melting 

 or hurting the brass. He told me the exact weight 

 of clean copper he had in the pot (a little pile of 

 pieces): he also told me the weight of the spelter, 

 which he said we called zinc, and also of a piece of 

 bismuth. All these must be put in after the copper 

 was melted. I could only see something sparkling 

 as if burning in the crucible .... 



Mogeme explained to me that what I saw sparkling 

 in the crucible was charcoal brays, to prevent the 

 oxidation of the melted copper ; while talking he 

 kept blowing the bellows. After a bit he said, "Now 

 he is melted." He scraped off the charcoal, dropped 

 in the zinc piece by piece, stirring all the time, and 

 finally put in the little piece of bismuth, then the 

 whole was poured out on a flat plate of iron, broken 

 up with a hammer as it cooled. When done he said 

 all right, that he could now braze the finished brass 

 coupling screws to the copper pipes without hurting 

 or melting the brass. Then to show me why he had 

 melted the copper first he put a piece of zinc in an 

 iron ladle and told me to watch him melt, then 

 he get red, then he grow littler and littler and go 

 off all in smoke. He said we called it "sublimating." 



Mogeme was a capital teacher: when explaining 

 anything to me it would be as if I was entirely ig- 

 norant. He would say, "No understand without 

 beginning right." At the time I refer to he gave 

 the formula for solders for brazing iron and steel, 

 copper to copper and copper to brass, and he was 

 very particular to see that I had put them right in 

 the memoranda book I carried. 



He had learned that in a boyish way I was inter- 

 ested in mineralogy and he gave me many fine 

 specimens which I could never learn how he obtained. 

 At the time of the solder making he gave me some 

 fine specimens of the Franklin ores from New Jersey, 

 one or two of which I still have. At this time he 

 told me that when coming from New York to Phila- 

 delphia he had gone to see Dr. Franklin's Dead 

 Furnace. He said it was choked to death. In the 

 bottom (the hearth) was salamander, iron, cinder 

 and charcoal all mixed up and massed. The top 



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