The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair / Their Observations and Triumphs

by C. M. Stevens

BEAUTY SHOW

Fanny was at the inn when noon came but the boys were nowhere to be seen. She saw great crowds of people massed a little way up the street but crowds were a common sight. She heard broken narrations of some exciting event that had transpired but there was nothing to cause her to think that her brother might be the central figure of all the excitement. Johnny rarely missed his appointments with her and she felt that something unusual had occurred or he would have met her at the designated place.

She decided to spend the afternoon at the Libby Glass Works and at the Beauty show. Once in the works, where glass is wrought into the most curious and costly designs, a few hours seems only too short for a good appreciation of the work done. The art, as illustrated there, is as fascinating as a romance. Three hundred people are employed there daily in showing what can be done with glass. Entrance is to be had to the blowing-room, in the center of which is the huge cruciform. In this there are placed the crucibles, as the working-holes are called. The heat in the furnace is 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The batch from which glass is made is composed of sand, lead, saltpetre, potash and soda. It has to be cooked in the terrible heat for twenty-four hours before it is fit for use. In front of the working holes are the workmen. A long steel tube is thrust into the batch and a quantity of the mixture accumulated on the end. From the moment it is taken out of the crucible until the form is completed the operator never allows the hot glass to be still for a moment. It is always moving.

The second floor of the building is a lively place. It is here that the cutting is done. The process is most interesting and shows the highest skill of the glass-worker's art.

Opposite the cutting department is the glass spinning and weaving department. The spinning of glass into fine threads is done by means of a wheel nine feet in diameter which revolves twenty times a minute. A glass rod is exposed at one end to a blowpipe flame. When the glass is melted it is attached to the periphery of the wheel and the operator sits with watch in front of him. Every minute the position of the melting glass is shifted until the broad wheel is filled, when it is stopped and the glass is cut and taken off, made into the desired lengths and taken to the loom. The weaving is done by girls on hand looms. Two hundred threads of glass are woven alternately with one thread of silk. The thread is made up into napkins, neckties, lamp shades, bonnets and hats.

"SHE THOUGHT VERY DIFFERENTLY OF HIM NOW."

Fanny sat down on a bench to rest for a while when, chancing to glance to the far side of the exhibit she saw Mr. Warner, whom she had formerly known as Mr. Moses, intently watching the work in the looms. She thought very differently of him now. Louis had hotly defended him against everything the confidence man had said, and, of course, she now saw that the man who had spoken against Mr. Warner was of the most abandoned type of men. Somehow she felt that she owed him some palliation for the rudeness she had exercised. It would, perhaps, not be altogether according to the rules of etiquette; but if the opportunity offered she intended to say something in explanation. As he came on around her way she felt her pulses beat faster and her face flushing under some strange excitement. As he approached to where she sat, he saw her and stopped for a moment. When he came by she looked, up and he bowed and was about to pass on, but she arose from her seat and he stopped. He held in his hand some samples of woven goods, and he remarked that he was making a study of these fabrics to see if they were worth handling by his firm. The conversation led on so easily and naturally that she forgot that she had something she wanted to say in extenuation of past rudeness. She could not help observing how totally different was this man's bearing and conversation from the evil-minded man who had presumed upon her acquaintance before. There were no questions asked; no lead in conversation that caused her to speak in any way whatever of herself or her people. In a few minutes he had passed on, and she felt from instinct and reason that this man was a gentleman.