The Turning of the Tide; Or, Radcliffe Rich and His Patients

by Elijah Kellogg

"I'll sleep a night on it," was the reply, "before I give it up."

Whether he received any information in dreams, or not, I am unable to say; but this much is evident—that he rose in a hopeful frame of mind, and, to the great surprise of his wife, whose whole soul was in the matter, set to work without the least hesitation.

Our readers will recollect that swamps in the forest do not freeze to a great depth, and often, when the snow comes before the cold is severe, not at all. Richardson found clay that he could get at in the swamp, and by cutting the ice obtained sand from the bottom of the brook. He now, with a hoe, broke up all the lumps in the clay, put water to it, and worked it with the hoe till it was fine and tough; then he worked in the sand, made a box a foot square, without ends (by nailing four pieces of boards together), and three feet in length. In the middle of this box he set a pine plug, larger at one end than the other, and tapering to the size he thought requisite, and filled the space between it and the sides of the box with the mixture of clay and sand, ramming it hard with his hammer-handle, in order that there should be no hollow places; put it in the kitchen, where it might dry gradually without freezing; made the frame, and hung his bellows on wooden pins, in default of iron; made the pole to blow with, while a strip of moose-hide served instead of a chain to lift the "wood" of the lower bellows; and then went into the woods to haul logs while his clay was drying, which required time, as the box excluded, in a great measure, the air.

In the mean while, work accumulated on his hands. Reuben Hight brought a chain to be mended, John Bradford a kitchen shovel, the handle of which was broken in two. These shovels were very large, the handle as long as a broom-handle, and the blade nearly as wide as that of a barn shovel. James Potter brought the bail of a Dutch oven; John Skillings wanted a hook made to a chain, and brought a harrow tooth to make it of. Richardson promised to do the whole when he got his bellows done, if he could, of which he felt by no means assured.

The clay was now thoroughly dried, being kept near the fire, and Richardson put the box on the kitchen hearth, and built a very moderate fire. This he gradually increased, till the box was burnt, the plug of pine consumed, and the clay brought to the condition of brick. He then permitted the fire gradually to burn out, and, when the operation was over, he had, as the result, a complete cone, thoroughly burnt. He made a square hole in his butment, put the pipe through it, with the smaller end towards the forge, and bedded it in clay mortar.

Into the large end of this brick cone he put the wooden nose of his bellows. It being a great deal smaller than the cone, he filled around it with clay mortar; his object in giving this shape to the passage being to admit filling, in order to prevent burning the wooden nose of the bellows. The length of the cone prevented its heating sufficiently to burn the bellows-nose by reason of its great distance from the fire, being out of the stone butment, in the cool air; and the clay mortar around the nose was, he thought, a poorer conductor of heat than the brick cone itself.

Richardson completed his work about noon, and it was a good deal of self-denial to him to abstain from making a coal fire at once, and going to work; but he thought it best to let his mortar dry. He, however, satisfied himself that there would be no difficulty in raising all the wind he needed, and he made a small wood fire to dry the clay before it should freeze.

The next morning the shop presented much the appearance of a jubilee. The children had obtained a promise from their father that he would not kindle the fire till they were up. They were out of bed before a ray of light streaked the sky, and the moment breakfast was despatched, the whole family, even to the dog and cat, hastened to the shop. It was Saturday, and Richardson, knowing that Bradford's wife would want to bake, and need the shovel, began with that, putting the two parts in the fire, after having made them ready to weld, or, as he termed it, "shut." He resolved to have a heat this time; put on the coal, and plied the bellows; but by and by he noticed that the iron began to send off sparks, and saw little black specks of charcoal sticking to the iron. Pulling it out of the fire, he found it was all burnt to a honeycomb: that the little black specks of charcoal had burnt into the very substance of the iron, and yet they were black, and the iron came to pieces the moment he struck it. The anvil was covered with scales, and he found it would not weld.

He was sadly puzzled, and most of all, that the charcoal that stuck to the iron, and burnt into it, did not get red hot itself: and he found there was such a thing as getting iron too hot. Little Clem had been to John Drew's with his father in the canoe, and now came to the rescue.

"Father," he said, "why don't you do like as Mr. Drew did?"