Publisher's Synopsis
NEW YORK, Saturday, October 12, 1878. Bang! click! the desk closes, the key turns, and good-bye for a year to my wards-that goodly cluster over which I have watched with parental solicitude for many a day; their several cribs full of records and labelled Union Iron Mills, Lucy Furnaces, Keystone Bridge Works, Union Forge, Cokevale Works, and last, but not least, that infant Hercules, the Edgar Thomson Steel Rail Works-good lusty bairns all, and well calculated to survive in The struggle for existence-great things are expected of them in The future, but for the present I bid them farewell; I'm off for a holiday, and the rise and fall of iron and steel "affecteth me not."
