“‘No—no—no!’ says the villain, his teeth knockin together wid the fright. ‘Shure didn’t they die natural!’
“‘Liar!’ shouted O’Flaherty, ‘twice to-night,’ says he, ‘I had you covered, and the waving of a blade of grass would have sent your soul to its long and bad account; but I couldn’t do it,’ says he, the big tears coorsin down his cheeks, as he dashed the gun in the road, ‘for the spirit of my poor dead child whispered for mercy for you.’
“The next mornin poor Con was found lying on the little girleen’s grave, but whin they wint to wake him up, his spirit had gone to hers.
“Ever since that, yer honor,” continued Darby, “the first-borns that die in their infancy, are brought there to be buried from miles upon miles all round the counthry, and on the anniversary of their deaths, if the father or mother are able to thravel at all, they come to the grave to pray, and dress it with fresh flowers and garlands; and they think that the spirit of their child is watchin and smilin on thim; and would you believe it, yer honor, whin I tell you that many a black and foul deed has been prevented by a pilgrimage to the Valley of the Innocents!”
BESSEMER AND GUN-METAL.
Many of the readers of this periodical may not be familiar with the more prominent principles of iron and steel manufacture, and as they are an important part of great-gun manufacture, I will therefore name them as briefly as possible.
Pure iron like pure gold is homogeneous, but unlike gold it is rarely pure. If gold be kept in a melted condition a sufficiently long time, all extraneous matters may be burnt away, but if iron be kept in a hot state too long it will be burnt away itself. Pure iron appears to be ductile, but pure iron will not melt. To form cast-iron, a quantity of carbon must be mixed with the pure iron. If the quantity of carbon be less in amount, steel is the result.
The ancient method of making steel was to cover up bars of iron with charcoal powder and to keep them in a red-heated condition for a fortnight or so. When taken out the iron was found covered with blisters arising from gases constituting some of the impurities of the iron. Consequently, the purer the iron the less it would be blistered. To turn the blistered steel to use, it was shorn to pieces, and the pieces piled on each other, heated to a welding temperature—i.e., surface melted—and forged under the hammer. When drawn out into bars it was called “single shear steel.” To improve it, it was cut up again and repiled, welded, drawn into bars, and so called “double shear steel.” But these processes left the metal full of specks, flaws, and imperfect welds, with scaly particles, rendering it unfit for delicate cutting-tools.
In those days die-sinkers and others paid as much as three or four guineas per pound for a steel brought from India, called Wootz, which came in little half-round lumps, shaped as the bottom of a crucible, and weighing from two to three pounds. This was, in fact, the metal from which Indian sword-blades and other weapons were forged, and it was really natural steel cast by workmen sitting on their haunches and urging their fire by right and left-hand circular bellows.
In process of time it was discovered that, if instead of welding up the shorn blistered steel, it was put into the crucible, it could be melted into a homogeneous mass without flaw or speck, and then forged into a malleable bar. This was called cast steel, but it was a long time ere people would be persuaded that cast-steel would be other than brittle, like cast-iron. But as time went on die-sinkers found that what was called “Huntsman’s steel,” sold at about four guineas a hundred weight, was quite as good as Wootz at four guineas a pound, and Wootz was thenceforward kept at home in India for sword-blade making.
English steel was made from Swedish iron, simply because it was a purer iron than any other, and was manufactured by charcoal, and not by coke. But neither steel nor iron could be manufactured in large masses, save by the process of welding together smaller portions,—ever an imperfect process at best in the modes used; and so the prices ranged from eighty pounds per ton, for the highest qualities, to thirty pounds per ton for the lowest—carriage springs—till the advent of railways, when, with an enormously increased demand, the price went gradually down to twenty for manufactured springs, all specified to be of Swedish steel—all Sweden and Russia to boot not being competent to furnish the supply; English iron being in fact resorted to, to manufacture an inferior article.
One man finally solved for us the problem, how to produce both iron and steel in homogeneous masses of any required bulk. This man was Henry Bessemer, one of that not numerous inventive race by dint of whose brains England is not as China, but is ever progressive, a race ever seeking to develope the true meaning of what has been called the “primal curse,” not “sweat of the face” or “brow;” but rather sweat of the brain within the brow, wherein to seek redemption from all painful drudgery by converting it into healthy exercise. From sugar-refining to iron-making, yet with the bent of his mind—doubtless French Huguenot by derivation—ever leaning rather to chemistry than to mechanism, there are few things of the future that Henry Bessemer has not tried at, as witness the patent list, that record of pretended rewards for genius, wherein his name appears no less than sixty-seven times, beginning in March, 1838, and ending in December 1858, ranging over many subjects:
Printing, railway-breaks, glass, bronze powder, paints and colours, atmospheric propulsion, steam-vessels, locomotives, sugar, varnishes, kilns, furnaces, ornamenting surfaces, guns and projectiles, waterproof fabrics, screw propellers, iron and steel, railway wheels, beams and girders, treating coal, &c. Twenty-one patents were taken previous to the alteration of the law, for England only, exclusive of Irish and Scottish, and probably three thousand pounds were extracted from the inventor’s pockets in fees. The patents he has taken since the alteration of the law indicates the fact that the cost of patents is not less than before, but considerably greater, the restriction in title