idelines coaching the men and yelling like boys when a batter lifted a
homer over the fence. That was before the rattle heads and fanatics
had poisoned the well of good fellowship and made men fear and hate
one another. Sometimes the Welsh would play against the Irish or the
English. At one time most all the puddlers in America were English,
Irish or Welsh.

In these ball games, I am glad to say, I was always good enough to make
the team. After telling of being a bandsman at thirteen and a puddler at
sixteen, I would like to say that at seventeen I was batting more home
runs than Babe Ruth in his prime, but everything I say must be backed up
by the records, and when my baseball record is examined it will be found
that my best playing on the diamond was done in the band.

CHAPTER XVI. WRESTING A PRIZE FROM NATURE'S HAND

After melting down the pig-iron as quickly as possible, which took me
thirty minutes, there was a pause in which I had time to wipe the back
of my hand on the dryest part of my clothing (if any spot was still dry)
and with my sweat cap wipe the sweat and soot out of my eyes. For the
next seven minutes I "thickened the heat up" by adding iron oxide to the
bath. This was in the form of roll scale. The furnace continued in full
blast till that was melted. The liquid metal in the hearth is called
slag. The iron oxide is put in it to make it more basic for the chemical
reaction that is to take place. Adding the roll scale had cooled the
charge, and it was thick like hoecake batter. I now thoroughly mixed it
with a rabble which is like a long iron hoe.

"Snake bake a hoecake,
And lef' a frog to mind it;
Frog went away, an'
De lizard come and find it."

Any lizard attracted by my hoecake would have to be a salamander--that
fire-proof creature that is supposed to live in flames. For the cooling
down of that molten batter didn't go so far but that it still would make
too hot a mouthful for any creature alive.

The puddler's hand-rag is one of his most important tools. It is about
the size of a thick wash-rag, and the puddler carries it in the hand
that clasps the rabble rod where it is too hot for bare flesh to endure.

The melted iron contains carbon, sulphur and phosphorus, and to get rid
of them, especially the sulphur and phosphorus, is the object of all
this heat and toil. For it is the sulphur and phosphorus that make the
iron brittle. And brittle iron might as well n