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The carriage could not enter the narrow rue de Nevers; but as Schmucke lived in a house at the corner of the quai she was not obliged to walk up its muddy pavement, but could jump from the step of her carriage to the broken step of the dismal old house, mended like porter's crockery, with iron rivets, and bulging out over the street in a way that was quite alarming to pedestrians.
All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and make the outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted to shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position, complained against the rivets. "We can't help it! We can't help it!" they murmured in reply.
This was a long echoing rumble. It came from the frames scores and scores of them, each one about eighteen inches distant from the next, and each riveted to the stringers in four places. "We think you will have a certain amount of trouble in that"; and thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held everything together whispered: "You Will! You will! Stop quivering and be quiet.
Like an old woman he now wrung his hands and groaned, hysterically; and now he paced the steel floor of the vault that was destined to be his tomb; and now he stopped again and stared about him with wild eyes. On all sides, sheer up a hundred feet or more, the smooth steel sides of the vast oxygen tank rose, studded with long lines of rivets.
As I had seen the town of Dresden several years before, and the only building new to me was the splendid theatre, I took advantage of the few evening hours of my stay to visit this structure. Standing in the midst of the beautiful Cathedral-square, its noble rotunda-like form at once rivets the attention.
Each man wore beneath his cap a little head covering of burnished steel set with rivets of gold, and underneath his jerkin a coat of linked mail, as fine as carded wool, yet so tough that no arrow could pierce it. Then, seeing all were ready, young Partington mounted his horse again, and the yeomen having shaken hands all around, the five departed upon their way.
Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims.
Some idea of the magnitude and weight of the vessel may be formed from the fact that each iron plate weighs about the third of a ton, and is fastened with a hundred iron rivets. About thirty thousand of these plates were used in her construction, and three million rivets. The fastening of these rivets was one among the many curious operations performed in course of building.
The negro has been, and still is, thoroughly misunderstood. However severely we may condemn the horrible system of slavery, the results of emancipation have proved that the negro does not appreciate the blessings of freedom, nor does he show the slightest feeling of gratitude to the hand that broke the rivets of his fetters.
Using his knife instead of a stone, he was able the next day to convert their knives into much better saws than his own had been; and the other two rivets were cut in a much shorter time than the first. They waited another week and then the wind began to rise, and by evening half a gale was blowing, and the rain falling heavily.
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