What time I was not stoking the fire, I was stirring the charge with a long iron rabble that weighed some twenty-five pounds. Strap an Oregon boot of that weight to your arm and then do calisthenics ten hours in a room so hot it melts your eyebrows and you will know what it is like to be a puddler. But we puddlers did not complain. There is men's work to be done in this world, and we were the men to do it. We had come into a country built of wood; we should change it to a country built of steel and stone. There was grandeur for us to achieve, like the Roman who said, “I found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.” The spirit of building was in our blood; we took pride in the mill, and the mill owners were our captains. They honored us for our strength and skill, they paid us and we were loyal to them. We showed what bee men call “the spirit of the hive.” On holidays our ball team played against the team of a neighboring mill, and the owners and bosses were on the sidelines coaching the men and yelling like boys when a batter lifted a homer over the fence. That was before the rattle heads and fanatics had poisoned the well of good fellowship and made men fear and hate one another. Sometimes the Welsh would play against the Irish or the English. At one time most all the puddlers in America were English, Irish or Welsh. In these ball games, I am glad to say, I was always good enough to make the team. After telling of being a bandsman at thirteen and a puddler at sixteen, I would like to say that at seventeen I was batting more home runs than Babe Ruth in his prime, but everything I say must be backed up by the records, and when my baseball record is examined it will be found that my best playing on the diamond was done in the band. CHAPTER XVI. WRESTING A PRIZE FROM NATURE'S HAND After melting down the pig-iron as quickly as possible, which took me thirty minutes, there was a pause in which I had time to wipe the back of my hand on the dryest part of my clothing (if any spot was still dry) and with my sweat cap wipe the sweat and soot out of my eyes. For the next seven minutes I “thickened the heat up” by adding iron oxide to the bath. This was in the form of roll scale. The furnace continued in full blast till that was melted. The liquid metal in the hearth is called slag. The iron oxide is put in it to make it more basic for the chemical reaction that is to take place. Adding the roll scale had cooled the charge, and it was thick like hoecake batter. I now thoroughly mixed it with a rabble which is like a long iron hoe. “Snake bake a hoecake, And lef' a frog to mind it; Frog went away, an' De lizard come and find it.” Any lizard attracted by my hoecake would have to be a salamander--that fire-proof creature that is supposed to live in flames. For the cooling down of that molten batter didn't go so far but that it still would make too hot a mouthful for any creature alive.