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One day a collier came to see him, and complained, in a rather whining tone, that the path of his life was dark. "H'm," growled Ramftler, who hated sniffling, "is it darker than it was in the coal-pit?" The words proved the collier's salvation. In all his habits Ramftler was strictly methodical.
The practice then was to employ a furnace, placed at the bottom of the upcast shaft of the coal-pit, to produce the necessary ventilation. This practice was highly riskful. It was dangerous as well as ineffective. It was also liable to total destruction when an explosion occurred, and the means of ventilation were thus lost when it was most urgently required.
The other day Chrissie had what you would consider a rare treat, for his father took him and his brother down a coal-mine. They put on some of the miners' clothes, and then got into the "cage," and were let down by a strong chain; down, down, until they reached the bottom of the shaft, as the tunnel from the mouth of the coal-pit to the place where men are at work below is called.
The changes in the state of this country are now so rapid, that it would be wholly absurd to endeavour to lay down laws of art education for it under its present aspect and circumstances; and therefore I must necessarily ask, how much of it do you seriously intend within the next fifty years to be coal-pit, brickfield, or quarry?
"Crawley," said Meadows, solemnly, "let well alone. Don't ask my confidence, for I am often tempted to give it you, and that would be all one as if I put the blade of a razor in your naked hand." "I don't care, sir! You are up to some game as deep as a coal-pit; and I go on working and working all in the dark. I'd give anything to be in your confidence."
What did it matter to him how much ground it covered, or when it began, or when it would die, when his own life was as uncertain that minute as a match-flame in the wind. Why had they brought him there to show him that burning coal-pit? Not out of any desire to display the natural wonders of the land. The answer was in the fact itself.
It stood quite still and black among the corn-fields, its immense heap of slag seen rising almost from the oats. "What a pity there is a coal-pit here where it is so pretty!" said Clara. "Do you think so?" he answered. "You see, I am so used to it I should miss it. No; and I like the pits here and there.
It was in 1810, when Stephenson was twenty-nine, that his first experiment in serious engineering was made. A coal-pit had been sunk at Killingworth, and a rude steam-engine of that time had been set to pump the water out of its shaft; but, somehow, the engine made no headway against the rising springs at the bottom of the mine.
As she sits forlorn, it is not the wretched hovel that she sees, nor other hovels like it rows of tenements of hopeless poverty, the ale-house, the gin-shop, the coal-pit, and the choking factory but: "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood Stand dressed in living green" for her, thanks to the poet.
Over the greater part of England, south of the manufacturing districts, there are magnificent beds of various kinds of useful clay; and I believe that it would not be difficult to point out modes of employing it which might enable us to turn nearly the whole of the south of England into a brickfield, as we have already turned nearly the whole of the north into a coal-pit.
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