The Cinder Buggy PDF
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THE CINOER BUGGY BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE DRIVER "A good, rapidly moving novel of 'Wall Street' methods, written by a man who knows." -Springfield Republican "The book is among the most absorbing which we have read recently." -Heywood Broun in The World "I feel as did Mark Sullivan, who said: 'Garet Garrett has written one of the great novels of the day.' ... That is beside the point to one who wants to study man and his work. . . . The thing that impresses me is its fidelity to life." -Bernard M. Baruch. E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY THE CINDER BUGGY A F4,.BLE IN; IRON ';1ND STEEL BY GARET 9ARRETT AUTHOR C1ff "THI! DIUVER," ''THBBLUB WOUND," PTC. NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH. AVENUE Copyright, 1923 By E. P. Dutton & Company All Rights Reserved. PlINTED IN THE UNITD STATES OF AMERICA THE .CINDER BUGGY A pot-metal body on two little wheels, absurdly, bow-leggedly walking away to the duml with the slag, the purgings of iron, the villainous drool of the furnace- that is a cinder buggy. It is also a sign that what man refines beyond God's content with things as he left them will ver, soon perish for want of the dross from which it is parted. W h1 hath each thing its cinder' even the sweetest desire' THE CINDER BUGGY I A GENERATION has fled since a stranger was . seen in the streets of New Damascus on an errand of business. The town has nothing to sell except the finest wrought iron in the world. As the quality of this iron is historic and the form of it a standard muck bar for use in further manufacture you order it from afar at a price based on what is current in Pittsburgh. Sellers of merchandise miss New Damascus on pur pose. It is a catalogue town. It buys nothing because it is new, nothing it does not need, has no natural pride in waste whatever. Strangers are not unwelcome, only they must not mind to be stared at. The town is shy and jealous and bas the air of keeping a secret. There are no sights to see. Once people came great distances, even from Europe, to see the New Damascus blast furnaces. They were the first of their kind to be' built in this country, had features new in the world, and made the scene wild and awesome at night. All that is long past. There is only a trace of the mule railroad by which ore came down from the mountains..; Where the furnaces were are great green holes. N a- 1 2 THE CINDER BUGGY ture has had time to heal her burns. No ore has been mined or smelted at New Damascus for many years. Yet the place is still famous for its fine wrought iron. The ore now comes from the top of the Great Lakes, stops at Pittsburgh to be smelted, and arrives at New; Damascus in the form of pigs to be melted again, puddled and rolled into malleable bars. That may be done anywhere. It is done at many places. But it is so much better done at New Damascus than anywhere else that the product will bear the cost of all that transportation. The reasons why this is so belong to tradition, to the native pride of craftmanship, to that mysterious touch of the hand that is learned only in one place and cannot be taught. The iron workers here, descended from English, Scotch and Welsh smiths imported to this valley, are the best puddlers and rollers in the world. Therefore as people they are dogmatic, stubborn and brittle. There is the old Woolwine mansion on the east hill, there is the Gib mansion on the west hill. Nobody would recommend them to the sense of wonder. Be sides they are disremembered. They were once very grand though ugly. They are no longer grand and have been made much uglier by architectural additions of a cold ecclesiastical character. One is a nunnery. One is a monastery. The church got them for less than the walks and fences cost. Only a church could use them. All that the indwellers knew about them is that the woodwork polishes easily and must have been very expensive. The grounds are still nice. The river is lovely, but nobody has ever cared for THE CINDER BUGGY 3 it esthetically. The town is set with its back stoop to the river, as to an alleyway or tradesmen's entrance, facing the mountains where its wealth first was. Sights? No. Unless it be the sight of a town that seems to exist in a state of unending reverie. This is fancy. New Damascus appears to be haunted with memories of things confusedly forgotte~, as if each night it dreamed the same dream and never had quite remembered it. In the Woolwine library there is a memory of dis tinction in sixty parts,-bound volumes of the NEW n"A.MASCUS INTELLIGENCER back to 1820. There was a newspaper! An original poem, a column humorous, a notable speech on the slavery question, the secret of Henry Clay's ruggedness discovered in the fact that he bathed his whole person once a day in cold water, and the regular advertisers, all on the first page. One of the advertisers was a W m. Wardle, bookseller, sta tioner, importer of all the current English imprints, proprietor of a very large stock of the world's best literature, periodicals, and so forth. Wm. Wardle's name is still on the lintel of the three-story building he occupied until about 1870. The ground floor now is rented to a tobacconist who keeps billiard tables in the back for the iron workers, the upper floors are in dis use, and there is no bookshop in New Damascus. Well, that is a sight, perhaps, only nobody would think to show it to you, because much stranger than the disap pearance of that important old bookshop is the fact that no one can remember ever to have missed it. If you mention this curious fact to the First N ationa!
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