workman. This done, he gave the opposite end of the ponty a gentle
knock, and the chimney fell off from the little glass wheel. One boy
took it up on a stick, and placed it in a box packed nearly full of
chimneys; while another reheated the glass wheel at the end of the
ponty, and a third carried a blowing-pipe to one of the little sheet-iron
carriages, or "pans," and knocked off the cold glass left by the last
article that had been blown upon it.
Lawrence now watched another blower. He gathered
on his pipe a larger lump of metal than the first, rounded it on a marver,
and blew it into a surprisingly large and beautiful bubble, which put on
all the colors of the dying dolphin, as the light shone upon its cooling
surface. He held it down and swung it, to lengthen it; or he held it above
his head, to flatten it at the poles; he whirled it, to perfect the
sphere; he pinched a button out of the thick soft glass that seemed forming
into a large drop at the end of it; and finally exchanged it, pipe and all,
for a clean pipe, with which he proceeded to blow another.
A second workman then took the bubble, knocked off
the button, and fashioned it very much as his fellow had fashioned the
lamp-chimney. But, instead of coming out of his hands a lamp-chimney, it
came out a beautiful, large lamp-globe. This a boy took, and hastened
with it to one of the leers, or annealing ovens.
A third was blowing a small balloon of glass,
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