CLOSE

---

ONE:"I know nothing about that."

CLOSE

---

ONE:And turned their savage life to civil ways;

CLOSE

---

ONE:"Say," the other whispered fiercely. "Poor Leon--is he dead?"

CLOSE

---

ONE:

CLOSE

---

ONE:There were only a few passengers by the train, one an old bent man with a grey moustache and a hooked nose coming down over it. His boots and hat and gloves were shabby enough, but his fur-lined overcoat, which he wore in spite of the warm night, was a magnificent garment of real sable. He stepped along the platform absently. As he looked round for a cab, Balmayne hailed him.The first impressions an apprentice forms of the smith-shop as a department of an engineering establishment is that it is a black, sooty, dirty place, where a kind of rough unskilled labour is performed��a department which does not demand much attention. How far this estimate is wrong will appear in after years, when experience has demonstrated the intricacies and difficulties of forging, and when he finds the skill in this department is more difficult to obtain, and costs more relatively than in any other. Forging as a branch of work requires, in fact, the highest skill, and is one where the operation continually depends upon the judgment of the workman, which neither power nor machines can to any extent supplant. Dirt, hard labour, and heat deter men from learning to forge, and create a preference for the finishing shop, which in most places makes a disproportion between the [102] number of smiths and finishers.

CLOSE

---

ONE:Cutting, as a process in converting material, includes the force to propel cutting edges, means to guide and control their action, and mechanism to sustain and adjust the material acted upon. In cutting with hand tools, the operator performs the two functions of propelling and guiding the tools with his hands; but in what [58] is called power operations, machines are made to perform these functions. In nearly all processes machines have supplanted hand labour, and it may be noticed in the history and development of machine tools that much has been lost in too closely imitating hand operations when machines were first applied. To be profitable, machines must either employ more force, guide tools with more accuracy, or move them at greater speed, than is attainable by hand. Increased speed may, although more seldom, be an object in the employment of machinery, as well as the guidance of implements or increased force in propelling them. The hands of workmen are not only limited as to the power that may be exerted, and unable to guide tools with accuracy, but are also limited to a slow rate of movement, so that machines can be employed with great advantage in many operations where neither the force nor guidance of tools are wanting.The next day, Sunday, August 16th, I was already about at five o'clock in the morning, and soon witnessed some historical shots. In the park on one of the boulevards the Germans had been digging for two days, and prepared a firm foundation upon which big guns might be mounted. I saw one of these guns that morning, and at about half-past five three shots were fired from it at short intervals, by which Fort Loncin was completely destroyed, as was indicated by the terrific explosions which followed the third shot. After these shots I was quite benumbed for several minutes; in all the streets63 of Li��ge they caused the greatest commotion, which became all the greater because large numbers of cavalry happened to ride through the town, and all the horses started rearing.