upon him, and sizzling, quivering, white-hot masses of metal
sped past him, and explosions of fire and flaming sparks dazzled him and
scorched his face. The men in these mills were all black with soot, and
hollow-eyed and gaunt; they worked with fierce intensity, rushing here
and there, and never lifting their eyes from their tasks. Jurgis clung
to his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while the latter
hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use another
unskilled man, he stared about him and marveled.

He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of
steel--a dome-like building, the size of a big theater. Jurgis stood
where the balcony of the theater would have been, and opposite, by the
stage, he saw three giant caldrons, big enough for all the devils of
hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding,
bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through
it--one had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap
from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below--and men were working
there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright.
Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would
come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one
of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by
the stage, and another train would back up--and suddenly, without an
instant's warning, one of the giant kettles began to tilt and topple,
flinging out a jet of hissing, roaring flame. Jurgis shrank back
appalled, for he thought it was an accident; there fell a pillar of
white flame, dazzling as the sun, swishing like a huge tree falling in
the forest. A torrent of sparks swept all the way across the building,
overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight; and then Jurgis looked
through the fingers of his hands, and saw pouring out of the caldron a
cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth,
scorching the eyeballs. Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue,
red, and golden lights played about it; but the stream itself was white,
ineffable. Out of regions of wonder it streamed, the very river of life;
and the soul leaped up at the sight of it, fled back upon it, swift and
resistless, back into far-off lands, where beauty and terror dwell. Then
the great caldron tilted back again, empty, and Jurgis saw to his relief
that no one was hurt, and turned and followed