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Updated: June 10, 2025
A child who must kick posts is father to the man who cannot eat an egg which has been boiled either more or less than four minutes; who cannot work without absolute silence; who cannot sleep if steam-pipes crackle; and who must straighten out all the tangles of his life, past, present, and future, before he can close his eyes in slumber or take a vacation.
Continuing her philosophy of success, Phoebe proceeded to initiate me into the first process of my job, which consisted in pasting slippery, sticky strips of muslin over the corners of the rough brown boxes that were piled high about us in frail, tottering towers reaching to the ceiling, which was trellised over with a network of electric wires and steam-pipes.
The roar of the steam-pipes ceased, the throb of the engines struck the water, and the great steamer steamed away from the quay and out of the plain of the harbor into a wide world of gray waves and wind and rain.
One of the company would keep a sharp lookout for the possible advent of the sometimes rubber-shod passed midshipman doing police duty, and, if necessary, danger signals would be made from the basement story, by tapping on the steam-pipes, which signal would be repeated from room to room, and from floor to floor, generally in ample time for the young bacchanalians to disperse in safety.
But the nature of the heating accomplished by means of steam-pipes is very inferior to that from large radiating surfaces of firebrick. The average temperatures of a public bath should range from about 110° in the shampooing rooms to 250°-260° in the hottest part of the laconicum, taking the readings of the thermometer at a level of 6 ft. 6 in. above floor-line.
In the narrow bayou lay the gunboats, strung out in single file along a line of half a mile. They bore many signs of the hard knocks they had received in their excursion through the woods. Boats, davits, steam-pipes, and every thing breakable that rose above the level of the deck, had been swept away by the overhanging boughs, or dashed to pieces by falling trees.
A draught of cold air is continually forced through a large apparatus of steam-pipes, and, as it becomes vitiated in the rooms above, passes out through ventilators placed just below the ceiling. Our next visit was to the laundry, where two men, three women, and, last but not least, a steam-engine of 45-horse power, were perpetually engaged in washing the soiled linen of the hospital.
A very good condensing engine will work with 2.2 lb. of coal and 22 lb. of steam per horse power per hour. If we add this 71½ per cent. to 18½ per cent. we have 90 per cent., and there remain only 10 per cent. of the heat that can possibly have been converted into power. But some of this has been lost by radiation from steam-pipes, cylinder, etc.
It includes open grates and fireplaces, ancient or modern, large or small; it includes steam-pipes, hot-water pipes, and stove-pipes; and last, but not least, steam-radiators, than which it has never entered into the heart of man to conceive anything more surprising and unaccountable, flat, pin-cushiony things, big as a bedquilt, dangerous-looking hedgehoggy affairs, some huge and bungling, others frail and leaky, but radiators still.
"You'd better leave the sea, and take to being first-class messenger to go up and down steam-pipes." "Be quiet, Bob!" I said angrily. "Here, tell me, Barney," I continued; for now that the man was safe, the horror and nervousness of a terrible accident rapidly passed away. "Tell you what, sir?" "Is it hopeless? Is there no chance of getting to the forecastle bulk-head that way?"
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