This taught me that some of these thick-headed tribes can be
all swelled up with pride when they have little to be proud of.



CHAPTER XV

THE IRON BISCUITS


In the Sharon town band I played the clarinet from the time I
was thirteen until I left that town several years later to chase
the fireflies of vanishing jobs that marked the last
administration of Cleveland. A bands-man at thirteen, I became a
master puddler at sixteen. At that time there were but five boys
of that age who had become full-fledged puddlers. Of these young
iron workers, I suppose there were few that "doubled in brass."
But why should not an iron worker be a musician? The anvil,
symbol of his trade, is a musical instrument and is heard in the
anvil chorus from Trovatore. In our rolling mill we did not have
an anvil on which the "bloom" was beaten by a trip-hammer as is
done in the Old Country. The "squeezer" which combines the
functions of hammer and anvil did the work instead.

When I became my father's helper he began teaching me to handle
the machinery of the trade. The puddling furnace has a working
door on a level with a man's stomach. Working door is a trade
name. Out in the world all doors are working; if they don't work
they aren't doors (except cellar doors, which are nailed down
under the Volstead Act). But the working door of a puddling