“Now, boys,” Bill perorated, “before I retire to the shades of private life, I motion we give Three Cheers—­regular Toplifters—­for Richard Wade!”

“Hurrah!  Wade and Good Government!” “Hurrah!  Wade and Prosperity!” “Hurrah!  Wade and the Women’s Tears Dry!”

Cheers like the shout of Achilles!  Wielding sledges is good for the bellows, it appears.  Toplifters!  Why, the smoky black rafters overhead had to tug hard to hold the roof on.  Hurrah!  From every corner of the vast building came back rattling echoes.  The Works, the machinery, the furnaces, the stuff, all had their voice to add to the verdict.

Magnificent music! and our Anglo-Saxon is the only race in the world civilized enough to join in singing it.  We are the only hurrahing people,—­the only brood hatched in a “Hurrah’s nest.”

Silence restored, the Chairman, prompted by Perry, said, “Gentlemen, Mr. Wade has the floor for a few remarks.”

Of course Wade had to speak, and did.  He would not have been an American in America else.  But his heart was too full to say more than a few hearty and earnest words of good feeling.

“Now, men,” he closed, “I want to get away on the river and see if my skates will go as they look; so I’ll end by proposing three cheers for Smith Wheelwright, our Chairman, three for our Orator, Tarbox, three for Old Dunderbunk,—­Works, Men, Women, and Children; and one big cheer for Old Father Iron, as rousing a cheer as ever was roared.”

So they gave their three times three with enormous enthusiasm.  The roof shook, the furnaces rattled, Perry Purtett banged with the Chairman’s hammer, the great echoes thundered through the Foundry.

And when they ended with one gigantic cheer for IRON, tough and true, the weapon, the tool, and the engine of all civilization,—­it seemed as if the uproar would never cease until Father Iron himself heard the call in his smithy away under the magnetic pole, and came clanking up, to return thanks in person.

CHAPTER V.

SKATING AS A FINE ART.

Of all the plays that are played by this playful world on its play-days, there is no play like Skating.

To prepare a board for the moves of this game of games, a panel for the drawings of this Fine Art, a stage for the entrechats and pirouettes of its graceful adepts, Zero, magical artificer, had been, for the last two nights, sliding at full speed up and down the North River.

We have heard of Midas, whose touch made gold, and of the virgin under whose feet sprang roses; but Zero’s heels and toes were armed with more precious influences.  They left a diamond way, where they slid,—­a hundred and fifty miles of diamond, half a mile wide and six inches thick.

Diamond can only reflect sunlight; ice can contain it.  Zero’s product, finer even than diamond, was filled—­at the rate of a million to the square foot—­with bubbles immeasurably little, and yet every one big enough to comprise the entire sun in small, but without alteration or abridgment.  When the sun rose, each of these wonderful cells was ready to catch the tip of a sunbeam and house it in a shining abode.