"How long will such a pot as this last?"
"There's no telling anything about it. It
may crack in a week, or it may run four or five months. Two made
just alike, of the same batch of clay, will act that way. There 's
no help for it, but just to break 'em up and work 'em over again."
"They are like some people I know," said the
Doctor, "who are always in the furnace of affliction, or being broken
and trodden underfoot, and made ready for another turn at the fire.
Stourbridge clay is much like human clay, after all."
"But this clay gets a little rest in here,"
said the gaffer. "We like to have a pot a year old before we use it.
When one is wanted, we lower it on a truck through this trap door, and
run it into a pot arch, which is nothing but a great oven, or kiln,
where it is heated by degrees, and left about a week, and then taken
out red-hot, and run into its place in an arch of one of the great
furnaces."
Lawrence said he should think that must be an
operation worth seeing;-- a heavy pot like that, red-hot! "How much
does it weight?"
"About two thousand pounds."
"And how much does it hold?" asked the Doctor.
"Something like twenty-three hundred-weight of
material," said the gaffer.
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