THE SKY SCRAPER
Once in an enormous city, men built an enormous building. Deep they built it, deep into the ground; high they built it, high into the air. Now that it is finished the men who walk about its feet forget how deep into the ground it reaches. But they can never forget how high into the blue it soars. Their necks ache when they throw back their heads to see to the top. For, of all the buildings in the world, this sky scraper is the highest.
The sky scraper stands in the heart of the great city. From its top one can see the city, one can hear the city, one can smell the city—the city where men live and work. One can see the crowded streets full of tiny men and tiny automobiles, the riverside with its baby warehouses and its baby docks, the river with its toy bridges and toy giant steamers and tug boats and barges and ferries. The city noise,—the distant, rumbling, grumbling noise,—sounds like the purring of a far-away giant beast. And over it all lies the smell of gas and smoke.
The sky scraper stands in the heart of the great city. But from its top in the blue, blue sky one can see all over the land. Landward the fields spread out like a map till they are lost in the mist and smoke. Seaward lies the vast, the tremendous stretch of the sea, the wrinkled, the crinkled, the far-away sea that stretches to touch the sky.
Now this soaring sky scraper is the work of men—of many, many men. Its lofty lacy tower was first thought of by the architect. With closed eyes he saw it, and with his well-trained fingers quickly he drew its outline. Then at his office many men with T squares and with compasses, sitting at high long tables, with green-shaded lamps, worked far into the nights till all the plans were ready.
Then the sky scraper began to grow. The first men brought mighty steam shovels. One hundred feet into the earth they burrowed. The gigantic mouths of the steam shovels gnawed at the rock and the clay. Huge hulks they clutched from this underworld, heaved up with enormous derricks and crashed out on the upper land. Deep they dug, deep into the ground till they found the firm bed-rock. With a network of steel they filled this terrific hole. Into the rasping, revolving mixers they poured tons of sand and cement and gravel which steadily flowed in a sluggish stream to strengthen the steel supports.
At last,—and that was an exciting day,—the great beams began to rise. Again the derricks ground, as slowly, steadily, accurately, they swung each beam to its place. A thousand men swarmed over the steel bones, some throwing red-hot rivets, others catching them in pails, all to the song of the rivet driver.
