on, there was no cooler box to
receive the roasted coffee, which was dumped on the floor where it was
spread out three or four inches deep with iron rakes and sprinkled with
a watering pot. The contact of water and hot coffee caused so much steam
that the roasting room was in a dense fog for several minutes after each
batch of coffee was drawn from the fire."

A.E. Forbes also thus recalled the Carter machine in his father's
factory in St. Louis in 1853, when he used to help after school; and
sometimes ran the roasters, after 1857:

It was barrel shaped, having a slide the full length of one side to
fill and empty. A heavy shaft ran through the centre, resting on
the wall of the furnace at the rear end and on an upright about
eight feet from the front wall. The fire was about sixteen to
eighteen inches below the cylinder and of soft coal. The cylinder
was not perforated, the theory being to keep the vapors from
escaping.[364] This of course was erroneous. The color of the smoke
bursting from the edge of the slide was our medium of telling when
the roasting process was nearing completion, and often the cylinder
was pulled out and opened for inspection several times before that
point was reached. When just right, the belt was shifted to a loose
pulley, stopping the cylinder, which, was pulled off the fire. A
handle was attached to the shaft, the slide drawn, and the coffee
was dumped into a wooden tray which had to be shoved under the
cylinder. The coffee was stirred around in the tray until cool
enough to sack.

The roaster man had to be a husky in those days to pick up a sack
of Rio weighing about one hundred, sixty to one hundred,
seventy-five pounds (not a hundred, thirty-two pounds, as now) and
to empty it in the cylinder. We had no overhead hoppers.

[Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH AND AMERICAN COFFEE ROASTERS

1, 2--English charcoal machines. 3, 5, 8--American coal-stove
roasters. 4--Remington's wheel-of-buckets (American) roaster, 1841.
6--Wood's roaster. 7--Hyde's stove roaster. 9--Reversible stove
roaster. 10--Abel Stillman's stove roaster]

Later we built in the rear and put in two cylinders of the Chris
Abele type, having stationary fronts and filling and emptying from
the front end. We still used soft coal, with the fire sixteen to
eighteen inches under the cylind