ry man of them, bearing out the
professor's criticism of them, had a short dirty pipe in his mouth and
smelt strongly of drink. There were a few exceptions to this rule--
about one in every fifty applicants, perhaps--and they were almost all
non-union men, who eagerly and thankfully accepted employment, careless
of the sneers, gibes, and threats of the others; and these proved to be,
with scarcely a single exception, steady, reliable, honest, and capable
men, who soon worked themselves into leading positions. The professor
wanted about two hundred men, and he succeeded in securing twenty; after
which his overtasked patience gave out, and in despair he obtained the
remainder from Germany.

All this took time; and it was not until nearly eight months after the
conversation in the "Migrants'" smoke-room that the professor was
actually able to commence work in the building yard. Then, however, the
operations proceeded apace. Day after day long mineral trains jolted
and clanked noisily along the siding and into the yard, where they
disgorged their loads and made way for still other trains; day after day
clumsy steam colliers hauled in alongside the yard wharf and under the
fussy steam-cranes to discharge their cargoes; and very soon the lofty
furnace chimneys began to belch forth a never-ending cloud of inky
smoke. Very soon, too, the belated wayfarer might possibly, had he been
so disposed, have obtained a chance glimpse, through accidental chinks
in the close palisading, of a long range of brilliantly lighted
buildings, wherein, if the doors happened to be inadvertently left open,
he would have witnessed huge outpourings of dazzling molten metal,
which, after being subjected to the action of certain chemicals, and
passing through divers strange processes, was passed as it solidified
through a series of powerful rolling mills, which relentlessly squeezed
and flattened it out, until it finally emerged, still glowing red with
fervent heat, in the shape of long flat symmetrically shaped sheets, or
angle-bars and girders of various sections. And, a little later on, an
inquisitive individual, could he have obtained a peep into the jealously
boarded-in building shed, might have seen a far-reaching series of light
circular ribs of glittering silver-like metal, of gradually decreasing
diameter as they spread each way from the central rib, rearing
themselves far aloft toward the ground-glass skylight which surmounted
the roof