Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/31

Rh himself, he suffered no idleness among his subordinates. To his admirable qualities as a business man he added that of an expert mechanician. Not an inventor on the grand scale, he was constantly able to point out the one detail needful to convert a crude and costly notion into a remunerative speculation. In temper he was neither amiable nor agreeable, but no one could have suggested a more admirable occupant of the post he held.

One morning,—it was on the 6th of April, 1948,—a young assistant fitter, lately joined, entered locomoshed No. 7 on some trifling errand, when he was horrified to find this hard-headed Yankee, this sober Puritan,—Mr. Hanap, in fact,—foaming at the mouth and raving with every symptom of acute mania or rabies. But it was not this sight, painful as it was, that caused the young man to drop his tools and rush shrieking from the building. What was the spectacle of terror that could in a moment deprive one strong man of his reason, and expel all the manhood from another? In this shed—No. 7—was contained the chef d'œuvre of the Yellow Creek Works. With the view of rendering its automatism complete the agency