The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-12-24
Bill ArIp's Letter.
He is Home Again, Just Returned From Occurring Tour
observations During the Trip

deep in hair That's what | thought he
said and ! retold it that way. Not long
after this mutual friend told me that
my hn1lter friend was hurt at me for
cXaggerating the story, for he declared
that he told me that the ground was
covered two and half feet deep in HAIR,
and ] had, without amy provOcatiOn, add
ed a half foot to it. And so to keep the
peace | agreed to take off that half foot
and have ever since done so when / re-
peated the hunters story. 1t is a sore
temptation to us all to make story a
little bigger when we retell it and we
ought to be very careful on that line
And so / feel very cautious about retail
ing the magnitude of Things ut Ensley
But my eyes did not deceive me and ]
saw solid, steel billets that weighed 5000
pounds each piled up and cross piled like
great logs of wood, and | saw the men
molding them from the fiery furnaces
The men had ON large blue spectacles and
visors, for it is awful to look upon the
dazzling heat that CLOVIS from the cal
dron Of liquid steel. These caldrons were
not tapped from the bottom, but were
turned up at an angle of h degrees, 50
that they would overflow Ike water from
a wash bowl, and let the top of the lava
run into the upright molds. These huge
mOlds were arranged perpendiculaTly ON a
little train of cars that was moved slow
ly by electricity, and as fast as one was
filed another took its place. Oh it was
grand and fearful. These caldrons were
lifted up and careened by great rams that
looked like immense cannon. But | for
bear. The huge leviathans all around
me made me dizzy and l begged my
friends to let me go home for my
amazement was tired. Now just to think
of the wire department, where one of
these great billets was reheated and
started through the great rollers and was
squeezed smaller and smaller as it went
on through hundreds Of them TIL it was
reduced to wire-stcel wire of all sizes
even down to silver steel wire that was
small enough to make the bows to pair
Of spectacles. What a wonderful thing
is the brain of man? ! could tell more
wonderful things about Ensley, but | re-
member that during the civil war, when
Confederate money had flooded the South
and everybody had hat full or a bag
full. I asked a treasury official how much
had been issued, and he looked dazed for
a moment and said it was either three
lion, he wasn't certain which. And so l
Will take off the half foot.
Birmingham has been accustomed to
speak of Ensley as one of it's suburbs, 1T
pet. it's cub, but Ensley is already put
ting ON Pittsburg airs and talks of taking
in birmingham within the year and call
ing herself the Greater Ensley," for the
parent city has only 10000 people.
/ was going to write about Tuscaloosa.
that sits high on the banks of the Blacl;
Warrior, the Athens of Alabama, the
home of the university and the colleges
the alma mater of culture and refinement
the Druid city. the historic capital of thu
State up to 1914. | was going TO relate
something abort the destruction of it
beautiful university buildings by the Fed
eral army. and their reconstruction ON
far more magnificent scale. / wished t.
say something about it's splendid organi-
cation. its learned and efficient faculty
its museum, the largest in all the south
and it's magnificent library. | wished t.
make favorable mention Of the Stilman
institute. where negro students are study
ing theology and preparing for the
white mans methods of ministerial ser
vice, and to tell about the two negroes
from Africa who are there, and who are
the genuine sons of negro princes, whom
the missionaries have converted to Chris
tianity. But this letter is already toe
long and so l will suspend.
BILL ARP.