Table Of ContentTHE CINOER BUGGY
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE DRIVER
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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!
Description: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.
