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65. FORGING SHELLS.

THE SLAVES OF THE WHEEL.

No composition could be finer, no movement more expressive, no grouping more perfect; and yet all this was happening every day, and all day, in an oily, dirty, greasy, smoky shell factory, where no artist had ever worked before, and the workmen, black men, were merely turning the big shell, under the big hammer, by the big capstan wheel that held it. And I noted in the shop that the black men saw more in my drawings than the white; yet there's only one black painter in the country, so far as I know.

66. THE LARKS.

"Hark, hark, the lark"; this one sings a song, too, all his own, as he soars up to greet the coming sun; then away to battle, or to train for it. Our Lark.

67. THE BOAT BUILDERS.

"I am jus' real proud of this hull shop; I'm jus' certain jack proud of it," said the foreman. And what could be more graceful than the lines of these wooden boats he was building—all the boats of battleships seem made of wood—and how beautiful are their lines, the result of tradition. The boat builder is no cubist, as he worked out his drawings on the floor of the shop; and so the result is strength and beauty.

68. THE RIVETERS.

What perpendicular cathedral is as full of mystery as this shop? I know of none, and I know most of them; and when the fires flow on the work altar, and the great jaws pierce and rivet the boiler plates it resounds with the Hymn of Labor.

69. THE GUN PITS.

TEMPERING GUNS.

These pits, which I have drawn in Europe and America, have the greatest individuality of all the processes of war industry. The buildings are most impressive, towering, windowless, somber without, mysterious within, filled with strong shadows and strange shapes.

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And as I looked out from the blackness to the ore crane, making new ranges of Alps on its hillside, I wanted a gun to draw — or rather wanted to know how it was moved.

"Why, bring him one," said the manager — and it came, 60 feet long, and posed while I drew, and was such a good "sitter." And so I find my studio and my models wherever I work, but not often a model who poses so well and so quietly.

70. THE OLD HANGAR.

All the inventor's past life hung from the roof, successes and failures, trials and tribulations — and this old hangar like an old barn was worth drawing. Doubtless the new hangars are better suited to their purpose but they are most unpicturesque and so will all the world be, too, before long. What could be more unpicturesque than the modern soldier—more ridiculous than the modern sailor, or the modern camp?

71. MAKING RIFLES.

Gallery after gallery is like this in the great building, all filled with tiny men working at tiny machines to make the tiny guns they fight with, and over them hangs the flag of the country, put there, the director told me, not by the management but by the men.

72. HYDROPLANES.

AT REST ON THE BEACH.

Why do they remind one of Greek warriors with their proud helmets? I do not know, but they do. I suppose — in fact it is — because the line of the rudder is that of the crest of a helmet. Did the aeroplane builder steal, borrow, invent it — I once invented out of my head and a honeysuckle another phase of Greek art, but no one would believe me when I said so.

73. THE EMBARKATION CAMP.

THE CLASSIC GROVE.

No; this is not Italy but America. Another proof that the classical, the romantic landscape is all about — only if it had not been that the Embarkation Camp was by this grove I never should have seen it.

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