Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.Various
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
But carriages and wagons are also built here. You enter a shed (of two
stories this time), and find wood shavings instead of iron filings, and
the hissing of a circular saw instead of the quiet, steady scraping of a
"cutter." Here all the woodwork of the carriages is executed, and when
ready they are hoisted through a large trap-door in the roof to the
second story, where they are painted and varnished, and, if first-class,
"up-holstered." In a store-room above stairs, are piled heaps of
cushions ready for the most expensive carriages; at a table is a boy
stuffing with horse-hair the leathern belts that hang by the sides of
the windows; and elsewhere an artist is painting the arms of the company
on the panels of a door. Here and there are boards placed before a
carriage, with the intimation "Wet!" indicating that you must not go too
near; and some of the carriages give evidence of having seen service,
but are now renewing their youth under the skillful hands of the painter
and the upholsterer. When ready to "go on the line," they are let down
through the trap-door, fixed on their wheels and axles, and sent to
relieve others that require repair.
Six o'clock strikes, and work ceases. In walking back leisurely to the
station, I saw many of the workmen digging in their little gardens,
"bringing themselves," as Emerson phrases it, "into primitive relations
with the soil and nature;" others were reading the papers of the day at
the Mechanics' Institution; others strolling among the green fields
round the town; and others walking to a class-room, to hear a teetotal
lecture; while some were proceeding to recreations of a very different
kind. I was admitted through the iron gate by the same policeman; the
"down" express train arrived, and it conveyed me in an hour and a half
to Liverpool, a distance of about forty-five miles, stopping only once
at the well-known town of Warrington.
[From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.]
STEAM-BRIDGE OF THE ATLANTIC
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