HEROES OF THE SHOP

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 22, 1881

HEROES OF THE SHOP.

BRAVE deeds are done in shops and forges. A few days ago, in the American Iron Works at Pittsburgh, an iron-roller, named Robert Moore, had a white-hot ring of iron thrown by accident over his head and down upon his shoulders.

With wonderful nerve, he took hold with a pair of tongs of a piece of iron protruding from one side of the fiery circle, and seized the other side of the ring with his naked hand. The ring was a pretty tight fit, there not being quite an inch and a half to spare as it passed over his nose.

The man had the fortitude to lift the hot iron slowly and carefully over his head, without touching any part of it. His face was badly scorched, and his hand was burnt to the bone; but he never flinched. When the iron band was cold, he put it back on his neck, and found it just two inches larger round than his head.

Some years ago, a German laborer in the Fort Pitt cannon foundry, at Pittsburgh, had some melted iron accidentally poured into one of his shoes. He was carrying at the time one side of a vessel filled with liquid iron. If he had dropped it, he would have endangered the lives of his comrades and set fire to the building. If he had set it down, he would have spoiled the casting of a gun weighing one hundred and thirty tons.

The man walked steadily to the pit into which the molten iron was to be poured, and did not let go the handle of the vessel till his duty was done. He had that melted iron in his shoe about one minute and a half. It did not take him as long to get his shoe off, but who can imagine the torture, and the length to him of that minute and a half?

A fine young fellow in the same smoky city of Pittsburgh had his hand terribly lacerated by the machine he was in charge of. He felt that he was about to faint, and had only strength to say one thing to the foreman who caught him in his arms, "Don't let anything be said of this to my wife."

For every splendid act of heroism done on the battle-field, a hundred are done in shops and quarries, and on the storm-tossed ocean.—Youth's Companion.