STEELBOW 



STEELE 



711 



this brittleness and extreme hardness may be 

 tempered by reheating in various degrees according 

 to the degree of hardness required. This is the 

 tempering process properly so called. 



The workman has discovered a simple and 

 elegant means of determining the temperature 

 attained in this reheating. A film of oxide is 

 formed, and as this thickens its colour changes as 

 shown in the table below. Another method of 

 fixing the temperature is by immersing the tool in 

 a bath of fusible metal or alloy just at its melting- 

 point, which melting-point varies with the composi- 

 tion of the alloy. A third is to smear the surface 

 with tallow and watch the result. The following 

 table shows these results, the temperature at which 

 they occur, and the alloys that may be used. 



Colour. Temperature. Alloy. 



Effect on Tallow. 



1. Pale straw 420 F. 



2. Stra-wr 450 



3. Straw yellow..480 



4. Nut brown. ...600" 



5. Purple 630 



6. Bright blue... 680 



7. Deep Woe 890" 



8. Blackish blue. G40' 



7 lead 4 tin Vaporises. 



8 n it Smokes. 



8J M u More smoke. 



14 u ti Dense smoke. 



19 u u Black smoke. 



48 M u Flashes if light is ap- 



plied. 



50 u 2 it Continuous burning. 



{All lead or-> 

 boiling lin- : All burns away, 

 seed-oil J 



Long exposure to the temperatures named has 

 an effect similar to that of a higher temperature. 

 The usual practice is to plunge the article into 

 cold water immediately the required temperature 

 is reached, and the above table is based on this 

 practice. Varying temperatures, or degrees of 

 softening or 'letting down,' are demanded accord- 

 ing to the purposes for which the tool is used. 

 No. 1 pale straw is the temper for tools used in 

 cutting iron and steel, for lancets and some other 

 surgical instruments. Nos. 2 and 3 for tools used 

 in cutting brass. No. 3 for penknives and tools of 

 this class. No. 4 for scissors, stone-masons' chisels, 

 and the strongest tools used for cutting hard wood. 

 No. 5 for table-knives, clasp-knives, and ordinary 

 edged tools for cutting soft wood. No. 6 for 

 swords, bayonets, axes, &c. No. 7 for watch- 

 springs, needles, fine saws, and other tools where 

 elasticity is demanded. This is called ' spring- 

 temper. No. 8 for common wood-saws, and other 

 tools used for soft material. Steel is softened by 

 beating to redness and cooling very slowly (see 

 ANNEALING). See The Chemistry of Iron and 

 Steel Moving, by the present writer ( 1890). 



Steelbow (a word of doubtful origin), in Scots 

 law, means goods, such as corn, cattle, straw, and 

 implements of husbandry, delivered by the land- 

 lord to his tenant, by means of which the latter is 

 enabled to stock andi labour the farm, and in con- 

 lideration of which he becomes bound to return 

 articles equal in quantity and quality at the expira- 

 tion of the lease. 



Steele, SIR RICHARD, the father of the Queen 

 Anne essay, was born in Dublin in March 1672 

 ( n.s. ), and was there baptised at St Bridget's Church. 

 His father, Richard Steele of Mountain (Monks- 

 town ), was an attorney ; his mother had been a 

 widow named Elinor Svmes. His father died when 

 he was a child ( Taller, No. 181 ). Mrs Steele did not 

 long survive her husband, and the boy fell to the 

 charge of an uncle, Henry Gascoigne, secretary to 

 the first Duke of Ormond. Through Ormond's 

 influence, in November 1684 Steele was placed upon 

 the foundation at the Charterhouse, where he had 

 Addison, his junior by six weeks, for contem- 

 porary. In December 1689 he entered Christ 

 Church College, Oxford, and in March 1690 he 

 matriculated. He tried hard for a Christ Church 

 studentship, but eventually (in 1691 ) gained a post- 

 mastership at Merton. At the university he was 

 popular and respected, but in 1694 he suddenly 



enlisted as a cadet in the second troop of Horse 

 Guards, then commanded by the second Duke of 

 Ormond, thereby surrendering, according to his 

 own account, some rather vaguely described ex- 

 pectations as a Wexford landowner. Already at 

 college a dabbler in verse, in 1695 he made his 

 appearance as a printed poet by The Procession, a 

 conventional effusion on the funeral of Queen 

 Mary, which he dedicated to John, Lord Cutts, 

 who forthwith made him his secretary, and finally 

 gave him a standard in his own regiment of Cold- 

 stream Guards. In June 1700 he became involved 

 in a duel with an Irishman named Kelly, whom he 

 had the misfortune to wound severely. One out- 

 come of this occurrence was the production of the 

 devotional manual known as The Christian Hero, 

 which was written at the Tower Guard, and pub- 

 lished in April 1701. With the public it was 

 popular, but, as might be anticipated, it was re- 

 garded by Steele's military comrades as incompatible 

 with his calling as a 'gentleman of the army.' 

 ' From being thought no undelightful companion,' 

 he ' was soon reckoned a disagreeable fellow ; ' and 

 the necessity to 'enliven his character' drove him 

 to the odd expedient of writing a play. This, The 

 Funeral ; or, Grief ct la Mode, was acted at Drury 

 Lane in December 1701. It was followed in 1703 

 by The Lying Lover, and in 1705 by The Tender 

 Hiisband. About this time, it is supposed, being 

 now a captain in Lord Lucas' Regiment of Foot, he 

 engaged in certain researches for the ' philosopher's 

 stone,' the details of which rest mainly upon the 

 authority of that 'cornucopia of scandal,' the New 

 Atalantis of Mrs De la Riviere Manley, although 

 the fact of the researches is not denied. Their 

 failure is practically synchronous with his marriage 

 to a widow named Margaret Stretch ( with estates 

 in Barbadoes). The marriage took place in 1705, 

 and the lady died two years later. In August 1706 

 Steele was appointed gentleman-waiter to Queen 

 Anne's consort, Prince George of Denmark ; and a 

 few weeks after his wife's death, upon the recom- 

 mendation of Arthur Mainwaring(who, like Steele, 

 was a member of the Kit Cat Club ), he was ap- 

 pointed by Harley, then a Secretary of State, to the 

 post of Gazetteer, the annual salary of which was 

 increased to 300. By this time, it is presumed, he 

 had quitted the army ; but he continued to be spoken 

 of as ' Captain ' Steele. The next notable occur- 

 rence in his life was his second marriage, in Sep- 

 tember 1707, to the beautiful Miss Mary Scurlock, 

 the daughter of Jonathan Scurlock, deceased, of 

 Llangunnor in Carmarthen, and the ' Prue ' of her 

 husband's correspondence. Shortly afterwards, by 

 the death of Prince George, he lost his court 

 appointment. Then, without much warning, 

 appeared on the 12th April 1709, the first number 

 of the famous tri-weekly paper known as the 

 Tatler, the putative author of which was one 

 ' Isaac Bickerstaff,' a pseudonym borrowed from 

 Swift. In January 1710, during the course of the 

 Tatler, Steele was made a commissioner of stamps, 

 and for some obscure reason was deprived of his 

 gazetteership. The Tatler came to an end on 2d 

 January 1711, to be succeeded in March by the 

 more famous Spectator, which ceased 6th December 

 1712. To the Spectator, in March 1713, followed 

 the Guardian. In all these enterprises Steele 

 enjoyed the aid, as a contributor, of his friend 

 and schoolfellow Addison an aid the incalculable 

 value of which he acknowledged with loyal cor- 

 diality. ' I fared ( he said ) like a distressed prince, 

 who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid ; I 

 was undone by my auxiliary ; when I had once 

 called him in, I could not subsist without depend- 

 ence on him ' (Preface to Tatler, vol. iv.). 



In beginning the Guardian Steele had made 

 prudent profession of abstinence from political 



