made was to watch it from the beginning through each stage of the
process.
The boy handed it to a workman sitting on a
chair-shaped bench with strong, straight arms, across which he laid
the iron, with the glass at his right hand. Turning the rod, by
rolling it under his left hand, like a lathe, he gave the button another
pinch, and then knocked it off. The end of the gourd now had a small
hole in it.
"Notice the instrument he uses," said the gaffer.
"It looks like a pair of sheep-shears," said
Lawrence, "only the blades are duller. What do you call it?"
"The old name, pucellas, has about gone
out of use with us. We call it simply a pair of tools. They are,
pre-eminently, the glass-blower's tools,-- he shapes everything
with them."
The workman in the mean while had handed the
pipe back to the boy, who thrust the glass into the flames of one of the
"glory-holes."
"It is coal tar that gives that hot flash," said
the gaffer. "In the other glory-hole furnace, over yonder, we burn rosin.
He is heating the glass again, so that it can be shaped."
It was but the work of a few moments; and the glass
was handed, glowing, back to the workman, who had in the mean while taken
the button off from another precisely similar glass, which had been handed
him by another boy. This he now exchanged for the first. He laid the pipe
across the arms of his
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