Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/297

Rh women in a thousand, excluding children, have the slightest idea that all the panes of glass in their windows were once as round as the body of a hat box. So it is, but few can make it a real, tangible fact without seeing the process. These cylinders average about four feet in length and two feet and a half in circumference. They are slit in the middle from end to end by what may be called a long-handled knife with a diamond blade or point. Then they go to the fattening furnace or oven where the heat is carefully graduated to their delicacy, and gently opens and lays them flat upon a large, solid even table of glass. On this the wavy or wrinkled plate is ironed or mangled out to a perfect surface by a wooden roll or block called a "." The manager of one of the departments of this great establishment, who is its "Ministre pour les Affaires Etrangeres," took me next into what might be called the cutting-up lofts. My time was too short to ask many questions and see all the operations and extent of the works. I have said they covered the area of twenty-four acres. But this is only the foundation surface, and only one third of real space covered by the multifarious manipulations. Most of the buildings are three and more stories in height; so if all the area occupied were brought down to one dead level, it would doubtless make sixty acres. And I should think full five acres of