GLASS-BLOWING FOR LITTLE FOLKS. I F the Pink Page had not forgotten to fasten the edge of the carpet the Giant would not have tripped; and if the Giant had not tripped I suppose the glass-ware would not have been broken. But the Giant not only tripped, but fell headlong, and came to the floor with such a thump that he broke every window in the King's palace. Not only that! His stupid head burst open the door of the King's glass-closet, and his monstrous feet flew out against the parlor-maid, coming up stairs with a tray, and knocked her down stairs again. So there was smashed in the King's palace all the window-panes; all the tumblers; all the lamp-chimneys; all the bottles. "Why not send out and buy more?" My dear young friends, that was more easily said than done, for precisely four reasons: Nobody had window-panes for sale; because one day a circus and menagerie combined passed the palace just as the King was sitting down to breakfast. The King dropped his napkin and rushed to the window, but it stuck fast and refused to open. Consequently the King did not see the elephant, and flying into a rage he ordered every one who had any connection with the making of windows to be hung; which was done before the King had fiffished his third cup of coffee. There was no one to make or sell tumblers; for one day the court physicians had said to his Majesty, who drank too much wine, "Your Majesty must drink only one small tumbler of claret at dinner." "One small tumbler!" roared the King; and not daring to send away his doctors, he banished instead every one who dealt in tumblers. All bottle-makers had been packed off for similar reasons, after his Majesty had been ordered to take cod-liver oil. And nobody dared mention the word lampchimney, for his Majesty had beheaded all the lamp-chimney makers, to teach his servants not to break so many in the kitchen. So you see here was a more serious business than you could have supposed. When the King heard the news he flew into a violent rage. Now when the King was in a passion he was sure to be very polite. The more furious his anger the more ceremonious he grew. So when he said to the Giant, "My dear Hotontimorenos, pray come in; you know I am always charmed to see you," the | the tricks of a little dog. For some reason the Giant began to shake in his monstrous shoes. "Your Majesty," he said, humbly, "I am very sorry for breaking the glass-ware." "My dear Hotontimorenos," answered the King, "don't mention it. It is not worth talking about. You will make me as many more window-panes, tumblers, and so on within the next week, and that will be the end of it." "But-but-I don't know how," stammered Hotontimorenos, much frightened. "My lord Hotontimorenos is too accomplished a gentleman," answered the King, politely, "not to know every thing. But if you really do not know you will discover the method, of course." "But I have no-no wit, please your Majesty," replied Hotontimorenos, trembling. "I am a clumsy fellow." "My dear Hotontimorenos, it would grieve me to the heart to think that," said the King; "for if you fail I shall be obliged at the end of the week to cut your head off." Hotontimorenos fell on his knees. "My dear fellow, not another word!" said the King, graciously. "If I must cut off your head I must, as an example to the rest of my court. But I assure you it will be most painful to my feelings." "Your Majesty won't feel it half as much as I shall," blubbered the Giant, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his embroidered jacket. Now the Giant's next-door neighbor was a poor Wise Man, who, as Hotontimorenos came sulkily home, was laughing in his own door at THE WISE MAN AND THE GIANT. sight filled the Giant with rage, and striding up to him, Hotontimorenos said, fiercely, "If you don't find out how to make them in five days I will have your head, before the King gets mine." "How to make what ?" asked the Wise Man, in astonishment. "Window-panes-tumblers-bottles-lampchimneys!" answered Hotontimorenos, savagely. "But of what are they made?" cried the Wise Man, still more bewildered. "How should I know? I am a Lord of the Court, and a follower of the King," replied Hotontimorenos, haughtily. "It is for you to learn such things." Just here came a messenger from the King. "My lord Hotontimorenos, his Majesty sends his compliments, and reminds you that the whole palace is shivering in the draughts. The Queen has crick in the neck, the Prince has toothache, and all the ladies are grumbling, and have blue noses! So you will please to be quick about the window-panes." Before Hotontimorenos could reply came a second courier. "His Majesty," said number two, "is suffering with ague! So is the Dame of the Powder Closet, and twenty of the Pink Pages; and nobody can take any medicine, for there are no bottles." His Majesty," shouted a third courier, close behind the second, "desires that you will set about the tumblers at once, as the Bishop of Biscuits is coming to dine to-morrow." Not "His Majesty," cried a fourth messenger, "is in the dark. So is all the palace. a lamp can be lighted in it. The cooks are waiting for light to cook the supper. The babies are squalling for lights to go to bed. The Queen can't see to put up her curl-papers for the Bishop of Biscuits. The ladies are afraid of ghosts; and every body will be obliged to you for the lamp-chimneys as soon as possible." "You hear," roared Hotontimorenos, seizing the Wise Man by the throat. "Window-panes -tumblers-lamp-chimneys-bottles!" accompanying each word by a shake. "If you don't have them all by to-morrow morning I will dash your brains out." Then he turned on his heel, and ordered his cooks to roast him an ox for supper, that while he lived he might live, as became a giant twenty feet high. But the Wise Man shut his door and sat down in his chimney-corner, not to blubber, as the Giant had done, but to think. It was a huge chimney, large enough to have roasted the Giant's ox; but there smouldered on its hearth only one little half-dead Coal, for the Wise Man, as I have said, was very poor. There was something, however, peculiar about this Coal, for it seemed to watch the Wise Man, I as he sat there with his head on his hand, like THE WISE MAN AT HOME a wide-open eye; and when the Wise Man said aloud in despair, "How can I make these things when I have nothing in the house but a barrel of sand!" it actually winked; and when the Wise Man started, it winked again. "Eh! What did you do that for?" asked the Wise Man. "To see how near you came to it," snapped the Coal. "Came to what?" "Soda," guessed the Wise Man, remembering something that he had read. "Yes. But what are you about there? Don't you see I am going out? Build me up." The Wise Man ran for chips, but there were no chips; so he split up his three-legged stool. "That is not half enough," crackled the Fire, blazing and sputtering. "Build me higher." The Wise Man broke up his table and bedstead, and threw the bits on the flame. "More!" roared the Fire. "Build me higher, or you will never do what you wish." The Wise Man looked all about him. There was nothing except the outer door of his crazy old dwelling. With a dozen blows he broke down the door and flung it on the hearth. The flame leaped up broad and red, filling the chimney with a shower of sparks, and looking toward the ceiling the Wise Man saw the fire-light, not dancing there but coming down in hundreds and hundreds of bright, twinkling feet, crowding one behind the other. Hotontimorenos was troubled that night with bad dreams. Now he was a bottle full of nauseous medicine, and the King would tilt him up by the heels; and now he was a window-pane, and every moment in danger of being broken. Consequently he woke up trembling and in an ill humor; but remembering the Wise Man, he determined to go and dash his brains out with "Making your glass. Glass is made from out further ceremony. He walked along with "Walk in! walk in!" said the Wise Man, rubbing his hands. "We are coming on finely, my lord Hotontimorenos." "Bless my soul!" cried Hotontimorenos, staring. And no wonder; for, to begin with, you could never have known the Wise Man's house. If it had been a gutta-percha house, pulled out to twice its size, and with the roof drawn up into a monstrous chimney, it could not have been more altered; and where had been the Wise Man's bedstead and stool were wooden benches, with long iron arms, small cast iron tables, tubs, and pails of water; and around the room a row of ovens heated to a dull redness, as though the Wise Man had suddenly turned baker. In the middle was a huge blast furnace, like a monstrous bee-hive of brick, with four great round mouths; and in those mouths something that whirled and glowed as though you were boiling yellow flames. And going about among the ovens and tables, without looking to the right or left, as many men as if the Wise Man had been the father of a hundred children or so, and they had all suddenly grown up and come home together. And you may see just such men and such work in many an American factory; but these, as you and I know, were the Dwellers in Fire, who had come to help the Wise Man. "Why-why! what-is all this?" stammered Hotontimorenos. "Hush!" said the Wise Man. "Now we shall see something curious." Every moment the workmen went to and from the furnace with long iron rods. And one, near Hotontimorenos, dipping his rod in one of its open mouths, brought out something that stuck fast to its lower end; but that looked like a lump of red fire. The rod was hollow, for our workman blew through till his cheeks swelled out like a trumpeter's, and the fiery lump grew longer, and stretched out like India rubber. He twisted and twirled it about, and blew again with all his breath through the rod, and the lump puffed out round and large, as your breath swells out a thin India rubber ball, so that it looked as if he was blowing a red-hot soapbubble. "What is he going to make?" asked Hotontimorenos, a little afraid. "Please to step out of the way," answered the Wise. Man, impatiently. Behind the Giant was a little wooden trough, to which ran the workman, minding Hotontimorenos's twenty feet of gold embroidery no more than if he had been a fly; turning and pressing the bubble on the edge of the trough, and cooling the rod with water. And then in front of The workman laid the glass cylinder on a table, and striking the rod gently loosened it from the glass. He brought out on his rod a bit of red-hot glass from the furnace, and pulling it out with a pair of iron pincers like a gutta-percha string, laid it evenly around the closed end of the cylinder. the great furnace somebody had dug a square | end' of the cylinder, in the terrible heat, began pit like a cellar, covering it with boards with to stretch and spread out, and so grew thinner wide spaces between, as you saw in the floor of and weaker. The particles of air blown into your father's house before it was finished. Run- the cylinder, being heated, grew larger too, ning across these to the fire the man toasted this struggled to get out, and burst open the lower wonderful lump, which was red-hot like a coal, end of the cylinder, because it was the weakest and stretched and puffed out like India rubber; -which was just what was wanted. and then Hotontimorenos stepped back, he hardly knew why; and backward and.forward it began to swing-the long iron rod and the fiery ball-as though the workman were a clock and it the pendulum. Backward and forward, from the oven, down between the boards, out again on the other side, almost to the lower button of Hotontimorenos's waistcoat; and it was no longer a bubble, but a monstrous red-hot pear. And then it was no longer a pear, but long and round, like what we call a cylinder. And if you don't understand that, make the two edges of a stiff sheet of pasteboard meet together, and stand it on end, and you will have a cylinder. Only this cylinder, as the strong workman swung it on his iron rod, was closed at top and bottom, and was as long as your six-year-old sister, and larger around than her body; and though at either end it was still red-hot, the sides glittered and looked like- What do you suppose? Hotontimorenos guessed it. "What is that for?" asked Hotontimorenos, much surprised. With his pincers the man took away the redhot circle, and under it the Giant saw a line burned in the glass. He struck the closed end of the circle lightly outside of the burned line, and it fell off, leaving the cylinder open; because glass is made up of atoms or little particles holding tightly together by what is called attraction of cohesion; just as you and your little friends might stand in a circle and hold each other tight by the hands. But the particles under the red-hot line were so violently heated that they grew suddenly larger and pulled apart, as if you and your friends should only "It's glass!" shouted Hotontimorenos. "Exactly!" said the Wise Man, fairly on his hold each other by the tips of your fingers. tip-toes with delight. Then, you know, if any one came suddenly and The tall workman drew up the rod. He held pushed or startled you, how easily he could the lower end of the cylinder to the fire, and break your circle. So when the red-hot circle then he blew through the rod. When he had was taken away, the cold, striking on the heated done that he stopped the end through which he particles, made each particle suddenly draw ithad just blown with his thumb. The lower self together; and with that they quite lost their |