DRAMA OF FURNACE, FORGE AND SHOP 265 



the waves of heat that come from them. " All ready; let go," 

 cries the foreman. 



Attached to each car is a wheel. A hand from which the 

 perspiration is dripping grips the rim and from the bottom of 

 the tank issues a jet of white, out of which an occasional spark 

 shoots. It seems to be fire, but whiter than ordinary flame. 

 Liquid? Impossible, yet it is a liquid forming a molten lake 

 beneath. The light illumines the features of the men standing 

 rigid, motionless. It reveals every vein and every muscle of 

 their arms and breasts, the deep set lines of their faces. This 

 wonderful transformation fascinates them, too, without being 

 conscious of it, though they see it day after day and some year 

 after year. 



Nearer and nearer the liquid approaches the top of the 

 pit. The foreman nods to the men at the wheels. The hands 

 which have never relaxed that grip move slightly and the jet 

 of light becomes narrower and narrower, and at last vanishes. 

 The "ladles" are moved away and the seething mass left to 

 turn into solid matter. But the picturesque display is not 

 ended. Gradually the white surface loses its vividness and 

 assumes a yellowish tint. In turn this changes to a light red, 

 then to a deeper cardinal, steadily growing darker and darker. 

 It seems to be losing its life with the variation of color and at 

 the last indeed assumes the grajdsh hue with which death is 

 associated. 



Such is one scene in this theater where the drama of the 

 triumph of mind over matter is being enacted. As the metal 

 curtain is rolled aside, revealing another part of the stage, the 

 rush of light which comes from the opening blinds you for 

 the moment — only one thing that you can compare with that 

 glowing brilliance from which every second a jet of flame 

 shoots out. Dante has pictured it and Goethe has painted it 

 in words in " Faust." A hundred feet away the heat scorches 

 the skin as the sun on a noonday of July. Yet the half dozen 

 men flitting back and forth, their figures silhouetted against 

 the white, seem to dare the fire tongues to lick them, so closely 

 do they approach the opening. 



The man who wears the dark glasses gazes into it for a 

 moment or two, then steps back, places a little tube between 



