“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.
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.
