THE PASSING OF LI HUNG CHANG. BORN IN 1823; DIED IX 1901. When General Grant was l-eturning from Ills famous journey around the .world, he said: "I have met on this journey four great men—Bismarck, Bea oonsfleld, Gambetta and Li Hung Chang. I am not sure, all things consid ered, but Li Is the greatest of all the four." John Russell Young, one-time Minister of the United States to China, has made this fine word picture of the wonderful one-man power in the Chinese nation: "I see in him an histor ical figure of the century—the one Chinese statesman with the prescience and courage to lead his people toward what is best In our Western civiliza tion; a masterful. Intrepid spirit, who has done his work with fortitude." I American gtEel. y 15y Wuldon Fawcett. J * STEEL, that most useful and, after all, the most valuable of metals, is so pre-eminently the most important of the pro ilucts of Uncle Sam's energy, that its superiority has come, of late years, io be universally recognized. The age of iron has passed and the industrial and commercial world now lives in the age of steel. The latter metal is, of course, an outgrowth of that which was once supreme in the Manufacturing world in that the iron >re must first be converted into pig iron ere it can attain to the dignity »112 classification as steel; but the lat ter commodity is tougher and more elastic, and so it is preferred for the construction of buildings and bridges and ships and, indeed, every thing where great strength is required. tVhen steel tirst came into popularity !t cost much more to produce a ton »112 steel than to turn out the same jimount of iron, but a gradual cheap suing of processes has been going on, ind now the disparity is not nearly !0 great. To follow a car of ore in its journey through the modern steel making plant is to witness a constant succes sion of the most stirring incidents and the most dramatic pictures to lie found anywhere on the globe. The iron ore, arriving from Nature's wouderful jtorehouses in the Northwest, a train load at a time, is unloaded by means of iron buckets, each holding more than I ton of ore, which spin back and forth ilong structures that resemble minia ture suspension bridges and carry the A MODERN BLAST FURNACE. (Stoves in the background.) dark rod material to the foot of the blast furnaces. Here small ears run ning on an Inclined railroad take the ore and ascend with it to the top of the blast furnace and, upon reaching the summit, an ingenious mechanical de vice overturns the car and tumbles Its contents into a great fiery pit which yawns below. A blast furnace is nothing more nor less than a gigantic mixing pot in which the raw material l'rom the mines, coke or some other form of fuel, and limestone are churned about until each has wholly lost its identity in one fiery boiling mass. The fright ful heat of the blast furnace may not, perhaps, bo better illustrated than by the fact that its blinding intensity is such that a person may not look stead ily into this seething caldron even for a few minutes. The furnace derives its name from - IRON ORE MINE. the fact that through each great "brew" of white burning liquid, re plenished every quarter of an hour with fresh ore and fresh fuel, there is forced for hours at a time a toruado like blast of hot air, which not only makes the mass boil more actively, but also tends to drive off its impurities. Ranged near each of the blast furnaces are several monster iron tubes, re sembling in general outline the ap pearance of tiie blast furnace itself. These are the "stoves" of the plant and and in them is heated the air which is blown through the fiery mass within the blast furnace. When it is ex plained that many present-day blast furnaces give forth considerably more than half a thousand tons of iron every day, and that two tons of ore, a ton and a quarter of coke and half a ton of limestone are required for each lou of molten metal produced, it will be appreciated that the operation of :i single blast furnace is no inconsid erable enterprise. In the tapping of a blast furnace there is presented the first of those thrilling pictures wliicb have no coua- terpart In any other field of activity. A handful of men, pitifully pigmy in appearance beside the towering fur nace with its tiny, glowing white eyes, thrust and wrench and pound until an incision is made low down in this great tank of burning metal, and then spring quickly out of the way in order to avoid the stream of scalding metal which spurts from the opening, looking for all the world like a luminlous por ridge. This liquid iron, newly escaped from the boiling pot, is a deceitful quan tity. Apparently it is slow and slug gish in its movement, and yet it burns its way forward with insiduous and surprising rapidity. The workmen in charge, black, half-naked figures sil houetted against a glowing back ground, either guide the furious stream into ponderous kettles which stand awaiting it on the railroad cars near by, or else they allow it to furrow its way to little chanuels cut in the sand. A few years ago all the iron from a blast furnace ran into the hundreds of little troughs, each about three feet long, which dotted the sand floor all about the flame-spittiug tower, and when the metal had become quite cold each tiny trench contained an un shaply bar of iron appropriately desig nated as a "pig." However, inasmuch as the very uext step in steel-making is to get this metal back into the molten shape, the shrewd ironmongers who were ever seeking every possible way to save money in the process, con cluded that it was simply a waste of time and money to let the plg-lron cool at all, and now the molten metal I i POURING MOLTEN IRON INTO MOULDS. is trundled away in broad-mouthed kettles to the steel-making plant. It is essential at this juncture to in troduce the reader to the two different methods of steel-making—the Besse mer and the "open-liearth" processes, as they are respectively termed. Up to this point the transformation of the iron is invariably exactly the same, no matter what its ultimate destina tion may be; but with the end of the journey of the railroad train loaded with half a dozen kettles each con taining full twenty tons of the bub bling, red-tinged mass, comes the part ing of the ways. From a spectacular standpoint, the Bessemer process is the more interest ing. Each kettle of molten iron, as It arrives from the blast furnace, is poured Into a still larger caldron known as the "mixer." where it boils and siz zles in company with the contents of other kettles for quite an interval of time. Next it comes to a "converter," an egg-shaperd receptacle of hercu lean size and strength, and here once more it undergoes purification by means of another terrific blast of air, forced upward through the mass with such violence that the top of the "con verter" literally resembles a volcano in action. When the purification by tills heroic method is completed, the molten mass is ready to be poured into the ingot moulds, where it hardens in the form of blocks, each weighing five tons. The "open-hearth" method is less impressive in the eyes of the onlooker, but it results in the production of a better grade of steel. Formerly it was so much more expensive than the Bes semer process that few consumers of steel could afford to pay the price ex acted, but here, as in all other branches of steel making, costs have been shaved very heavily of late years. In the open-liearth plant. Instead of a "converter," there are long lines of furnaces that look like bake ovens and in which miniature seas of white metal, so intensely hot that you cannot gaze upon it save through blue glasses, boil and bubble, like lime in the mortar box before some building in course of erection. Cast into ingots, these are allowed to cool in their moulds, and are then once more thrust into a bath of flame and for the last time reheated. Thence the metal may be fed into the enor mous jaws of giant rolls which flatten it into plate of various size; it may be presed into armor for battleships by means of huge presses, or it may be squeezed into long slender strands that are ultimately cut into bars or railroad rails. All the while it remains red hot and water must be continually poured over the machinery, with the result that every time the rolls "bite" a slab of iron to force it into some thinner form, there is a report like the dis charge of a cannon. It may be stated advisedly that no where among the world's workers are there men who hourly brave death In such terrible form as it is presented to the steel workers. A blast furnace may "break-out" and engulf the poor, helpless mortals at its base In an ocean of annihilating flame; one of the giant ladles hoisted hither and tnitnw by long, gaunt arms of steel, may slip from Its place and drown hapless vic tims In a molten cataract; or some wriggling, snake-like cable of burn ing steel may snarl and tangle and, ItOIiIiINQ IRON. without nn instant's warning, wrap it self around some bystanding work man before he can even turn to escape. It is by the conduct of steel-making on so heroic a scale that the United i States is being enabled to capture the steel markets of the world. Last year she sent abroad nearly $118,000,000 worth of iron and steel, an increase of one-fourth over that of the two previous years, and it was distributed amongst all the countries on the globe. —The Book World. Safety Blind For Horses. When you want to get a frightened horse out of a burning stable a blanket thrown over its head renders it as docile as though there were no fire, and why shouldn't the same idea be applied to a runaway horse on the road? In the illustratiou we show this idea carried out under the invention of Daniel Connertli and Josef Roth weiler. In order that the appliance for manipulating the blinders may not. interfere with the control of the horse on ordinary occasions a separate pair of cords is provided, leading back to the carriage. The blinds are held normally open by springs on the bridle, COVERS THE EXES OF A RUNAWAY ANIMAL being hinged to the side straps. A pull on the cords throws a lever out from the rear portion of the hiuge and presses the blinds over the eyes, thus shutting out the vision of whatever has frightened the animal. As soon as tlie pressure is released on the cords the blinds resume their normal posi tion by the action of the springs.— Philadelphia Record. Automobile Racing Track. A correspondent in the Horseless Age suggests that some of the rich au tomobile owners who are constantly grumbling at the impossibility of se- SUQOESTED AUTOMOBILE TRACK. curing suitable roads or tracks upon which to speed their machines should get together and build a double-kite track, something on the order of the accompanying ilustration, with a bridge over the cross way. The track, he thinks, should be at least eight miles long and fifty feet wide, with a level "run-in." A grandstand midway, lie says, would give a commanding view of the whole course. Paris has always paid $13,500 a year to the detectives who guard the Presi dent of France,but has refused to do so longer, and the national govern ment has assumed the task. Twelve detectives are hired for the purpose. The present growth of London's pop ulation is 2500 a month. DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON SUNDAY'S DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED DIVINE. lubject: The Power of Hope—No Better Medicine Did a Man Ever Take—For- RITO the Repentant—The Perfect Life to Coine—Cultivate Hope. [Copyright* 1901. J WASHINGTON, D. C.—ln this discourse Dr. Talmage would lift people out of de spondency and bring something of future joy into earthly depression. The text is Hebrews vi, 19, "Which hope." There is an Atlantic Ocean of depth and fullness in the verse from which my text is taken, and I only wade into the wave at the beach and take two words. We have all favorite words ex pressive of delight or abhorrence, words that easily find their way from brain to lip, words that have in them mornings ind midnights, laughter and tears, thun derbolts and dewdrops. In all the lexi cons and vocabularies there are few words that have for me the attractions of the last word of my text, "Which hope." There have in the course of our life been many good angels of God that have looked over our shoulders, or met us on the road, or chanted the darkness away, or lifted the curtains of the great future, or pulled us back from the precipices, or rolled down upon us the rapturous music of the heavens, but there is one of these angels that haR done so much for us that we wish throughout all time and eternity to celebrate it—the angel of Hope. St. Paul makes it the center of a group of three, saying, "Now abideth faith, hope, charity." And, though he says that charity is the greatest of the three, he does not take one plume from the wing, or one ray of luster from the brow, or one aurora from the cheek, or one melody from from the voice of the angel of my text, "Which hope." That was a great night for onr world when in a Bethlehem caravansary the Infant Royal was born, and that will be a great night in the darkness of your soul when Christian hf born. There will be chanting in th -'S and a star pointing to the Nati, . I wil' not bother you with the h .< of a de' ition and tell you what hope is. Wher j sit down hungry at a table, we do 'ant an analytical discourse as to v -ead is. Hand it on; pass it round a a slice of it. .John speaks of . as a "pure hope;" Peter calls it a "lively hope;" Paul stvles it a "good hope," a "sure hope," a ''rejoicing hope." And all up and down the Bible it is spoken of us an anchor, as a hurbor, as a helmet, as a door. When we draw a check on a bank, we must have reference to the amount of money we have deposited, but Hope makes a draft on a bank in which for her benefit all heaven has been deposited. Hope! May it light up every dungeon, stand by every sickbed, lfend a helping hand to every orphanage, loosen every chain, caress every forlorn soul and turn the unpictured room of the alms house into the vestibule of heaven! How suggestive that mythology declares that when all other deities fled the goddess of Hope remained! It was hope that revived John Knox when on shipboard near the coast of Scotland he was fearfully ill, and he was requested to look shoreward and asked if I lie knew the village near the coast, and he answered: "I know it well, for I see the steeple of that place where God first opened my mouth in public to His glory, and I am fully persuaded how weak that ever I now appear I shall not depart this life till I shall glorify His holy name 111 the same place. His hope was rewarded, and for twenty-five years more he preached. That is the hope which sus tained Mr. Morrell of Norwich when de parting this life at twenty-four years of age he declared, "1 should like to under stand the secrets of eternity before to morrow morning." That was the kind of hope that the corporal had in the battle when, after several standard bearers had fallen, and turned to a lieutenant-colonel and said. "If I fall, tell my dear wife that 1 die with a good hope in Christ and that I am glad to give my life for my country." That was the good hope that Dr. Goodwin had in his last hour when he said: "Ah, is this death? How have I dreaded as an enemy this smiling friend!" No beter medicine did a man ever take than hope. It is a stimulant, a febrifuge, a tonic, a catholicon. Thousands of peo f)le long ago departed this life would lave been living to-day but for the reason they let hope slip their grasp. I have known people to live on hope after one lung was gone and disease had seemed to lay hold of every nerve and muscle and artery and bone. Alexander the Oreat, starting for the wars in Persia, divided his property among the Macedonians. He gave a village to | one. a port to another, a field to another and all his estate to his friends. Then Perdiccas asked, "What have you kept for yourself?" He answered triumphantly, ''Hope." And, whatever else you and I give away, we must keep for ourselves hope—all com forting, all cheering hope. In the heart of every man, woman and child that hears or reads this sermon may God implant this principle right now! Many have full assurance that all is right with the soul. They are as sure of 1 heaven as if they had passed the pearly ! panels of the pate, as though they were al ready seated in the temple of Got! unroll ing the libretto of the heavenly chorister. I congratulate all such. I wish I had it, ; too—full assurance—but with me it is hope. "Which hone." Sinful, it expects forgiveness; troubled, it expects relief; ! bereft, it expects reunion; clear down, it j expects wings to lift; shipwrecked, it ex pects lifeboat; bankrupt, it expects eter nal riches; a prodigal, it exnects the wide open door of the father's farmhouse. It does not wear itself out by looking back ward; it always looks forward. What is the use of giving so much time to the re hearsal of the past? Your mistakes are not corrected bv a review. Your losses cannot, by brooding over them, be turned into gains. It is the future that has the most for us, and hope cheers us on. We have all committed blunders, but does the calling of the roll of them make them any the less blunders? Look ahead in all mat ters of usefulness. However much you may have accomplished for God and the world's betterment vour greatest useful ness is to come. "No," says some one, "my money is gone." "No," says some one. "the most of my years are gone and therefore my usefulness." Why, you talk like an infidel. Do you suppose that all your capacity to do good is fenced in by this lifp? Are you going to be a lounger and a do nothing after you have quit this world ? It is my business to tell you that your faculties are to be enlarged and intensified and your oualifications for usefulness mul tiplied tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousand fo.d. Is your health gone? Then that is a sign "that you are to enjoy a celestial health compared with which the most jo cund and hilarious vitality of earth is in validism. Are your fortunes spent? Re member, you are to be kings and queens unto God. And how much more wealth you will have when you reign forever and ever! I want to see you when you ge( your heavenly work dress on. This little bit of a siieck of a world we call the earth is only tiie place where we get ready to work. We are only journeymen here, but will be master workmen there. Heaven will have no loafers hanging around. The book says of the inhabitants, "They rest not day nor night." Why rest when they Work without fatigue? Why seek a pillow when there is no night there? 1 want to see you after the pedestrianism of earth has been exchanged for power of flight and velocities infinite and enterprises in terstellar, interworld. I suspect that the telescope of that ob servatory brings in eight constellations that may comprise ruined worlds which need looking after and need help saintly and missionary. There may be worlds that, like ours, have sinned and need to be rescued, perhaps saved by our Christ or by some plan that God has thought out for other worlds as wise, as potent, ad lovely as the atonement is for our world. The laziness which has cursed us in this world will not gain the land of eternal ac tivities—so rnucn tonic in the air, so much inspiration in the society, so much achieve ment after we get the shackles of the flesh forever off. Do not dwell so much on opportunities past, but put your em phasis on opportunities to come. Am I not right in saying that eternity can do more for us than can time? What will we not be able to do wlien our powers of locomotion shall be quickened into the immortal spirit's speed? Why should a bird have a swiftness of wing when it is of no importance how long it shall take to make its aerial way from forest to for est and we, who have so much more im portant errand in the world, get on so slowly? The roebuck outruns us, tho hounds are quicker in the chase, but wait until God lets us loose from all limitations and hinderments. Then we will fairly be gin. The starting post will be the tomb stone. Leaving the world will be gradua tion dav before the chief work of our men tal ana spiritual career. Hope sees the doors opening, the victor's foot in stirrup for the mounting. The day breaks—first flush of the horizon. The mission of hope will be an everlasting mission, as much of it in the heavenly hereafter as in the earthly now. Shall we have gained all as soon as we enter realms celestial—nothing more to learn, no other heights to climb, no new anthems to raise, a monotony of existence, the same thing over and over again for endless years? No! More pro gress in that world than we ever made in this. Hope will stand on the hills of heaven and look for ever brightening landscapes, other transfigurations of color, new glo ries rolling over the scene, new celebra tion of victories in other worlds, heaven rising into grander heavens, seas of glass mingled with fire, becoming a more bril liant glass mingling with a more flaming fire. Which hope." Hope on, and, though you may never hear of your son's reformation and others may think he has left this life hopeless, who knows but that in the last moment, after he has ceased to speak and before his soul launches away, your prayer may have been answered and he be one of the first to meet you at the shining gate. The prodigal in the parable got home and sat d*wn at the feast, while the elder brother, who never left the old place, stood pouting at the back door and did not go in at nil. To another class of persons I introduce the angel of hope, and they are the inva lids. I cannot take the diagnosis of your disorder, but let hope cheer you with one of two thoughts. Such marvelous cures are being wrought in our day through med ication and surgery that your invalidism may yet be mastered. Persons as ill as you have got well. Can cer and tuberculosis will yet give way be fore some new discovery. I see even' day people strong and well who not long ago I saw pallid and leaning heavily on a staff and hardly able to climb stairs. But if you will not take the hand of hope for earthly convalescence let me point ,vou to the perfect body you are yet to have if vou love and serve the Lord. Death will put a prolonged anaesthetic upon your present body, and you will never again feel an ache or pain, and then in His good time you will have a resurrec tion body, about which we know nothing expect that it will be painless and glorious beyond all present appreciation. What must be the health of that land which never feels cut of cold or blast of heat, and where there is no east wind sowing pneumonias on the air, your fleetness greater than the foot of deer, your eye sight clearer than eagle in sky, perfect health, in a country where all the inhab itants are everlastingly well! You who have in your body an en cysted bullet ever since the Civil War; you who have kept alive only by precau tions and self denials and perpetual watch ing of pulse and lung; you of the deafened ear and dim vision and the severe back ache; you who have not been free from pain for ten years, how do you like this storv'of physical reconstruction, with all weakness and suffering subtracted and everything jocund and bounding added? Do not have anything to do with the gloom that Harriet Martineau expressed in her dying words: "I have no reason to believe in another world. I have had enough of life in one and can see no good reason whv Harriet Martineau should be perpetuated." Would you not rather have the Christian enthusiasm of Robert An nan, who when some one said, "I will be satisfied if I manage somehow to get into heaven," replied, pointing to a sunken ves sel that was being dragged up the River Tay: "Would you like to be pulled into heaven with two tugs like that vessel yon der? I tell you I would like togo in with all my sails set and colors flying." Again, let me introduce the element of hope to those good people who are in de spair about the world's moral condition. They have gathered up appalling statis tics. They tell of the number of divorces, but do not take into consideration that there are a thousand happy homes where there is one of marital discord. They tell you of the large number in our land who are living profligate lives, but forget to mention that there are many millions of men and women who are doing the best they can. They tell you the number of drunkenes in this country, but fail to mention the thousands of glorious churches with two doors —one door open for all who will en ter for pardon and consolation, and the other door opening into the heavens for the ascent of souls prepared for transla tion. . From this hour cultivate hope. Do so by reading all the Scriptural promises of the world's coming Indenization, and doubt if you dare the veracity of the Almighty when He says He will make the desert roseate, and the leopard and kid will lie down in the same pasture field, and the lion, ceasing to be carnivorous, will be come graminivorous, eating "straw like an ox," and reptilian venom shall change into harmlessness, so that the "weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den, and there shall be nothing to hurt or destroy in all Cod's holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." So much for the world at large. Then cultivate hope in regard to your own health, your own financial prosperity, your own longevity, by seeing how in other people God mercifully reverses thiegs and brings to pass the unexpected, re membering that Washington lost more battles than he gained, but triumphed at the last, and, further, by making sure of your eternal safety through Christ Jesus, understand that you are on the way to palaces and thrones. This life a long, ending in durations of bliss t'.iat neither human nor archangelic ficulties can measure or estimate —redolence o. a springtime that never ends and fountain* tossing in the light of a sun that never sets. May God thrill us with anticipation of this immortal glee! "Which hopi." I said in the opening of this s hject that my text was only the wave c. the beach, while the whole verse tVom whi.h it is taken is an ocean. But the oeian tides are coming in, and the sea is getting so deep 1 must fall back, wading out as 1 waded in, for what mortal can stard be fore the mighty surges of the lull IK' > of eternal gladness? "Eye hath not see 1 nov ear heard; neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which Col hiih prepared for them that love him."
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