This was true. What are called cut-nails, are made by machinery. They are cut from flat-bars or plates of iron, almost red-hot, by a massive and ponderous engine carried by water. At the same instant that the nail is cut off from the end of the plate by the cutting part of the engine, the end of it is flattened into a head by another part, which comes up suddenly and compresses the iron at that end with prodigious force. The nail is then dropped, and it falls down, all hot, into a box made to receive it below. The prodigious pressure to which the hot iron is subjected in the process of making cut-nails, seems as it were to press the particles of iron closer together, and make the metal more compact and hard. The consequence is, that such nails are very stiff, and if bent much, they break off. This is no disadvantage, provided that the wood to be nailed is such that the nail is to be driven straight into the substance of it to its whole length. In fact, this hardness and stiffness is an advantage, for, in consequence of these properties, the nail is less likely to bend under the hammer. When, however, the nailing to be done is of such a kind that it becomes necessary that the nail should pass through the wood so as to come out upon the other side, to be clinched there, the stiffness of the iron in a cut-nail constitutes a serious difficulty; for the end of the nail where it comes through, instead of bending over and sinking into the wood, as it ought to do, at first refuses to bend at all, and then when the workman attempts to force it to bond by dint of heavier blows with the hammer, it breaks off entirely. To remedy this difficulty, it is found best to heat nails intended for clinching before driving them. By heating the iron red hot, the metal seems to expand to its original condition of ductile iron, and it loses the extreme hardness and stiffness which was given to it by the force and compression of the nail-making machine. Stuyvesant had seen a carpenter in New York heating some nails on one occasion, and he had asked him the reason. He, therefore, understood the whole process, and his plan was now, after selecting his nails, to go and heat them red-hot in the kitchen-fire. He made a little calculation first in respect to the number of nails that he should want. There were six cross-bars. These bars were to be nailed at both ends. This would make twelve nailings. Stuyvesant concluded that he would have four nails at each nailing, and multiplying twelve by four, he found that forty-eight was the number of the nails that he should require. To be sure to have enough, he counted out fifty-two. Some might break, and perhaps some would be lost in the fire. Phonny felt a considerable degree of interest in Stuyvesant's plan of softening the nails, and so he left Wallace to go on boring the holes, while he went with Stuyvesant into the house.