wheels was a row of queer-looking, tunnel-shaped wooden tubs, called
hoppers, set in a strong frame-work, and filled with water, or with
sand and water, which dripped upon the wheels.
The Doctor, looking at his watch, and remembering
the business which had brought him to the vicinity of the glass-house,
departed with the gaffer; and Lawrence was left with the foreman of the
cutting-room.
"But where do you cut the glass?" the boy
inquired; for he had expected to see diamonds employed in the operation.
"What is commonly called glass-cutting,"
replied the foreman,-- a very obliging elderly person in shirt-sleeves and
white apron,-- "is nothing but grinding in some shape. Cutting
with diamonds is a very different thing; we don't do anything of that
kind here.
"Regular glass-cutting," he continued, "is done
by three processes. Here is the first."
He showed a man working at a wheel wet with sand
and water dripping from its companion hopper. The wheel was of iron, and
the sand made a sharp, rough grit upon it. To this the man held with firm
hands the stem of a goblet, very much as a knife is held to a grindstone.
The stem was round as it came from the hands of the blower, and he was
grinding it into angles.
"You notice," said the foreman, "that the edge of
the wheel is shaped for the kind of work it is doing.
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