With delight and curiosity Lawrence watched.
The man was gathering a lump of metal from one of the pots. He blew
into it gently, and shaped it on a marver, flattening it until it
resembled in form and size the part of a sword-hilt that is grasped
by the hand.
"In flattening it," said the gaffer, "he
flattened the bubble of air he had blown into it." Lawrence looked,
and could see the bubble, about as broad as his finger, extending
through the glass. "That is to be the bore of the thermometer,--
though of itself it is now larger than two of three thermometer
tubes. Now they are going to put on the stripe."
A boy brought a lump of melted, opaque white
glass on a ponty. It was touched to the now hardened sword-hilt, and
drawn from end to end along the flat side, leaving a stripe about as
broad as a lady's finger. The sword-hilt, with the stripe carefully
pressed down and hardened upon it, was now plunged into a pot of
melted glass, and thickly coated; the soft exterior was rounded on a
marver, until the entire body of glass, enclosing the stripe and the
flattened bore, was in size and shape a little longer and considerably
larger than a banana.
This was now slowly heated to a melting state.
Then came forward a boy and a ponty, bearing on its end a piece of
glass resembling an inverted conical inkstand. This he set upright on
the ground, the bottom of the inkstand uppermost. The blower, with
the melting lump, now advanced, and held it over the
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