XXXVI THE GREAT STACK, SHEFFIELD
If either you have the brains, or it is clear enough, you can see this great stack dominating the whole landscape and townscape as you come out of the railroad station at Sheffield. A great American literary person actually saw it and regretted, on an editorial page, that no artist ever looked at such subjects; but when I not only wrote him that I had etched it already and sent him a proof to prove it, he never acknowledged my letter, but he kept the proof. I may say that in 1883 I made a series of illustrations of work subjects in Sheffield which were printed in Harper's Magazine. Two things always impressed me in that town—the boiling water in the rivers and the abominable habits of the natives in the streets, who from across the rivers and behind walls and other safe places "'eave arf a brick" at you if you dare to draw.
XXXVII THAMES WORKS, LONDON
Along the sunny Thames still linger the old docks, old warehouses—worked in the old out-of-date way—mostly by hand. Ashore and afloat the port of London is the most out-of-date place in the world—and it's scarcely even picturesque any longer.
XXXVIII SCHNEIDER'S WORKS AT CREUSOT
This is the Volcano of Work, and the blast furnaces are its crater. Right in the town, but below it, surrounded by high hills, it stands, and you can, from the corner of the Grande Rue, look down into the seething depths of it—and every little while it pants, it roars, and then explodes in fire and fume. This drawing was made from the hills opposite the town, but shows how like the crater of a volcano the whole place is.