astute-looking dwarf of an apparatus, biting off red-hot ends of
rods, closing its jaws together upon them in such a way as to form
a four-square mould, then smartly hitting one end so as to make a
projecting head: a railroad spike is turned off in a moment. See this
other making "nuts" as smartly as a baker makes ginger-nuts: some are
raw and some are cooked--that is, some are punched hot and some cold,
sufficing for different purposes: the cold are the softer, and the
easier to "tap" or perforate with the screw--thread. Other machines
are scissors trimming plates of iron like cardboard; others, in a
careless kind of way, spend all their time in nipping off whatever
bolts and bars are presented to them; and others make pretty rows of
rivet-holes all along the edges of huge iron plates. These animated
creatures of the mill, performing their tasks like child's play,
are efforts of intellectual genius as truly as are the dramas of
Shakespeare. And busy talents are growing up in our manufacturing
centres as in hotbeds, each one trying to carry the domain of
mechanical substitution a little farther, and so escape the necessity,
so costly in America, of paying for man-power. In several ways a grand
manufactory is a college, stimulating the human minds engaged there
in the highest degree, setting a premium on intellect and culture, and
reminding us that whoever caused some idea to take shape that never
had an existence before, was called by the ancients a "_poeta_."

[Illustration: STEAM MANUFACTORY OF SUPERPHOSPHATES.]

We will explore another of these great working-places--this time,
a group of mills as large as a modest village, yet devoted to one
special product. In 1864, Mr. Henry B. Seidel purchased a rolling-mill
which had already been in operation with varied success for eighty
years, and established the manufacture of large plates for iron