ay seen such a thing, and
accordingly he was sometimes up and sometimes down, and stood by the
machinery and stared at the whole construction, as if he were counting
all the pins and screws. The course of the canal appeared to him to be
something quite new; the plan of it and the guide-books were quite
foreign objects to him: he turned them and turned them--for read I do
not think he could. But he knew all the particulars about the
country--that is to say, from olden times.
I heard that he did not sleep at all the whole night. He studied the
passage of the steam-boat; and when we in the morning ascended the
sluice terraces from Lake Venern, higher and higher from lake to lake,
away over the high-plain--higher, continually higher--he was in such
activity that it appeared as if it could not be greater--and then we
reached Motala.
The Swedish author Tjoerneroes relates of himself, that when a child he
once asked what it was that ticked in the clock, and they answered him
that it was one named "_Bloodless_." What brought the child's pulse to
beat with feverish throbs and the hair on his head to rise, also
exercised its power in Motala, over the old man from Trollhaetta.
We now went through the great manufactory in Motala. What ticks in the
clock, beats here with strong strokes of the hammer. It is
_Bloodless_, who drank life from human thought and thereby got limbs
of metals, stone and wood; it is _Bloodless_, who by human thought
gained strength, which man himself does not physically possess.
_Bloodless_ reigns in Motala, and through the large foundries and
factories he extends his hard limbs, whose joints and parts consist of
wheel within wheel, chains, bars, and thick iron wires. Enter, and see
how the glowing iron masses are formed into long bars. _Bloodless_
spins the glowing bar! see how the shears cut into the heavy metal
plates; they cut as quietly and as softly as if the plates were paper.
Here where he hammers, the sparks fly from the anvil. See how he
breaks the thick iron bars; he breaks them into lengths; it is as if
it were a stick of sealing-wax that is broken. The long iron bars
rattle before your feet; iron plates are planed into shavings; before
you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire--long
heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around
in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for
steam-boats and locomotives, _Bloodless_ also here s
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