_St. Louis, Missouri, November, '79_.--What do you think I find
manufactur'd out here--and of a kind the clearest and largest, best, and
the most finish'd and luxurious in the world--and with ample demand
for it too? _Plate glass_! One would suppose that was the last dainty
outcome of an old, almost effete-growing civilization; and yet here it
is, a few miles from St. Louis, on a charming little river, in the wilds
of the West, near the Mississippi. I went down that way to-day by the
Iron Mountain Railroad--was switch'd off on a side-track four miles
through woods and ravines, to Swash Creek, so-call'd, and there found
Crystal city, and immense Glass Works, built (and evidently built to
stay) right in the pleasant rolling forest. Spent most of the day, and
examin'd the inexhaustible and peculiar sand the glass is made of--the
original whity-gray stuff in the banks--saw the melting in the pots (a
wondrous process, a real poem)--saw the delicate preparation the clay
material undergoes for these great pots (it has to be kneaded finally
by human feet, no machinery answering, and I watch'd the picturesque
bare-legged Africans treading it)--saw the molten stuff (a great mass
of a glowing pale yellow color) taken out of the furnaces (I shall never
forget that Pot, shape, color, concomitants, more beautiful than any
antique statue,) pass'd into the adjoining casting-room, lifted by
powerful machinery, pour'd out on its bed (all glowing, a newer, vaster
study for colorists, indescribable, a pale red-tinged yellow, of tarry
consistence, all lambent,) roll'd by a heavy roller into rough plate
glass, I should say ten feet by fourteen, then rapidly shov'd into the
annealing oven, which stood ready for it. The polishing and grinding
rooms afterward--the great glass slabs, hundreds of them, on their flat
beds, and the see-saw music of the steam machinery constantly at work
polishing them--the myriads of human figures (the works employ'd
400 men) moving about, with swart arms and necks, and no superfluous
clothing--the vast, rude halls, with immense play of shifting shade, and
slow-moving currents of smoke and steam, and shafts of light, sometimes
sun, striking in from above with effects that would have fill'd Michel
Angelo with rapture.
Coming back to St. Louis this evening, at sundown, and for over an
hour afterward, we follow'd the Mississippi, close by its western
bank, giving me an ampler view of the river, and with effects a little
different from any yet. In the eastern sky hung the planet Mars, just
up, and of a very clear and vivid yellow. It was a soothing and pensive
hour--the spread of the river off there in the half-light--the glints
of the down-bound steamboats plodding along--and that yellow orb
(apparently twice as large and significant as usual) above the Illinois
shore. (All along, these nights, nothing can exceed the calm, fierce,
golden, glistening domination of Mars over all the stars in the sky.)
As we came nearer St. Louis, the night having well set in, I saw some
(to me) novel effects in the zinc smelting establishments, the tall
chimneys belching flames at the top, while inside through the openings
at the façades of the great tanks burst forth (in regular position)
hundreds of fierce tufts of a peculiar blue (or green) flame, of a
purity and intensity, like electric lights--illuminating not only the
great buildings themselves, but far and near outside, like hues of the
aurora borealis, only more vivid. (So that--remembering the Pot from the
crystal furnace--my jaunt seem'd to give me new revelations in the color
line.)