e Emperor of France as a great
rarity.

The college boy thought by day and dreamed by night of the metal that
was everywhere, but that might as well be nowhere, so far as getting
at it was concerned. At the age of twenty-one, the young man
graduated, but even his new diploma could not keep his mind away from
aluminum. He borrowed the college laboratory and set to work. For
seven or eight months he tried mixing the metal with various
substances to see if it would not dissolve. At length he tried a stone
from Greenland called "cryolite," which had already been used for
making a kind of porcelain. The name of this stone comes from two
Greek words meaning "ice stone," and it is so called because it melts
so easily. The young student melted it and found that it would
dissolve alumina. Then he ran an electric current through the melted
mass, and there was a deposit of aluminum. This young man, just out of
college, had discovered a process that resulted in reducing the cost
of aluminum from twelve dollars a pound to eighteen cents. Meanwhile a
Frenchman of the same age had been working away by himself, and made
the same discovery only two months later.

Aluminum is now made from a mineral called "bauxite," found chiefly in
Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas. Mining it is much more agreeable than
coal mining, for the work is done aboveground. The bauxite is in beds
or strata which often cover the hills like a blanket. First of all,
the mine is "stripped,"--that is, the soil which covers the ore is
removed,--and then the mining is done in great steps eight or ten feet
high, if a hill is to be worked. There is some variety in mining
bauxite, for it occurs in three forms. First, it may be a rock, which
has to be blasted in order to loosen it. Second, it may be in the form
of gray or red clay. Third, it occurs in round masses, sometimes no
larger than peas, and sometimes an inch in diameter. In this form it
can easily be loosened with a pickaxe, and shoveled into cars to be
carried to the mill. Bauxite is a rather mischievous mineral and
sometimes acts as if it delighted in playing tricks upon managers of
mines. The ore may not change in the least in its appearance, and yet
it may suddenly have become much richer or much poorer. Therefore the
superintendent has to give his ore a chemical test every little while
to make sure that all things are going on well.

This bauxite is purified, and the result is a fine white powder, which
is