One at a time the balls are drawn out on to a buggy and wheeled
swiftly to the squeezer. This machine squeezes out the slag which
flows down like the glowing lava running out of a volcano. The
motion of the squeezer is like the circular motion you use in
rolling a bread pill between the palms and squeezing the water
out of it. I must get the three balls, or blooms, out of the
furnace and into the squeezer while the slag is still liquid so
that it can be squeezed out of the iron.

From cold pig-iron to finished blooms is a process that takes
from an hour and ten minutes, to an hour and forty minutes,
depending on the speed and skill of the puddler, and the kind of
iron. I was a fast one, myself. But you expected that, from the
fact that I am telling the story. The man that tells the story
always comes out a winner.



CHAPTER XIX

I START ON MY TRAVELS


Now that I was a master puddler, I faced the problem of finding
a furnace of my own. I saw no chance in Sharon. Furnaces passed
from father to son, so I could not hope to get one of the
furnaces controlled by another family. My father was not ready to
relinquish his furnace to me, as he was good for twenty years
more of this vigorous labor.