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“I suppose you know,” said Sam “that there are a great many kinds of
steel in the market nowadays, such as high carbon steel, low carbon
steel, manganese steel, tungsten steel, nickel steel....”
“Yes,” said Lewellyn, “and Wildcat oil steal and Wall Street steals....”
“Now, Lewellyn,” said aunt Margaret, “this is Sam’s story, not yours.”
“All right,” said Lewellyn, “I guess I can stand it if you can.”
“There are a great many ways of treating steel, too,” continued Sam,
“for giving it desired properties, some of which have been very
successful.”
“I knew a fellow in the Bethlehem Steel Company several years ago who
was a nut on steel treating. He said that by selecting the proper kind
of steel, such as nickel steel or chrome steel or some other sort, it
was possible to get any desired properties if you gave the steel proper
heat treatment. He was my roommate for a year and he talked about this
so much that I got all worn out—and mad.
“First I told him that I wanted a steal that could not be found out but
he paid no attention. Then I asked whether it would be possible to make
a steel for springs that could be pushed down two inches and come back
four. I found I had given him something to think about. He shut up right
away and began to think. I could always tell when he was thinking by the
fishy stare that came into his eye; like the eye of a fresh fish that is
ten days old.
“He studied on this for nearly a week and I had a blessed rest. I began
to hope it would keep him quiet forever; but at the end of the week he
said he thought he could do it. His eyes had lost the fishy stare and a
smile spread over his face and stayed there. I forget what the steel was
to have in it but I remember it was to contain molybdenum.
“He went up to Bethlehem the very next day and I saw no more of him for
a week. When he came back he said he had been working hard and thought
he was on the track but the darn stuff was brittle. Still he thought he
might be able to overcome that if he had time enough. I told him he
could have all the time that was coming but he paid no attention. Every
time he came back after that he would sit and stare and the fishy look
would come back: then he would slap his leg and hurry back to Bethlehem.
“About a month after I had put the idea into his head he came back one
day and said he had the kind of steel I wanted.
“I told him to make me two coiled springs two inches wide and four
inches long, with a steel plate fastened to either end. One of these
plates was to have four holes in for screws, so it could be fastened to
the heel of a shoe. I said that on second thought he had better make
three springs, so that if one broke we might still have enough.
“Yes, he thought that might be wise, because springs were apt to break.
When he came back next time he had a dozen springs in a box. They were
beautifully made and were silver plated, too.
“Then we couldn’t agree at first who should put them on and see how they
worked. He said I had started the idea, and it would not be fair that he
should have the honor of first trying them. But I said the idea was not
worth much; he had made the right kind of steel and the way to heat
treat it; that was two to my one. I was really afraid to try the darn
things myself, and when you hear what happened you won’t wonder.
“We fastened one spring to each of a pair of his shoes. He did not put
them on but carried them and wore another pair to the end of Bushkill
Street where we planned to try them out. There isn’t much traffic there,
and we wanted a quiet place for our experiment. He put on the spring
shoes at Green Street and jumped towards the river. The first jump was
two feet, the second four, the third eight and the fourth sixteen. By
the time he got to the river he was jumping sixty-four feet at a clip.
Then the spring on his left foot broke with a loud crack and he turned
half around and struck the water horizontally at thirty miles an hour.
He went under and came up a little further on, came around in a circle
and shot out on the sand. He was stunned at first, but as soon as he
felt a little better he asked me to get his other shoes and take these
off, which I did.
“After that we walked home and he sat thinking for quite awhile. After
he came out of this trance he said it seemed easy enough to go, the
problem was, how were we to stop? He thought it would be easy to steer,
too, by holding one foot out a little further than the other. We could
learn to do that easy enough. The best way to stop, he thought, would be
to have a spring on the end of a stick. By holding this so it would
strike the ground first it would send you back and then you would stop.
“So he got a stick, or rather two sticks—one for each hand—and put a
spring on each. We had our next jumpin match on the Twelfth Street lot
about midnight of a moonlight night. He jumped two feet and came back
four; jumped eight feet and came back sixteen. By the time he was up to
sixty-four feet he struck the roof of a house, went through and landed
in a bed. It was lucky he did: he might have been killed if he had
landed anywhere else. It was a slate roof, and he was pretty badly
scratched when he came down in his stocking feet. He was afraid to keep
his shoes on for fear he might get started again. The man who owned the
house was with him, looking pretty mad.
“It cost him quite a little to mend the roof and pacify the man, but he
finally got it fixed up. I told him he wanted to be more careful; next
time he might land in a bed with some girl or the old woman and that
would cost him more yet.
“I got so nervous about this time that I moved into another room. I was
afraid if I went on going out with him the police might manage to stay
awake long enough to pinch us. The last time I saw him he told me they
had made some bed springs out of this steel by mistake and some of them
were sent out and used. He heard of a man who had a cot in his summer
tent. He came in one afternoon very tired and threw himself on the cot
and the next thing he knew he flew through the top of the tent fell back
and broke through and landed on the floor with an awful jolt. He told me
he was sure that steel would be a money maker as soon as he learned how
to control it.”
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