I can't help it if you keep to the road. If you jump over the first
hedge you come to, and go rambling over the hills, of course I shall not
find you."

"Then there is no fear," I said; and he walked sharply back, while I
strode on slowly and stopped by the open window of one factory, where a
couple of men were spinning teapots.

"Spinning teapots!" I fancy I hear some one say; "how's that done?"

Well, it has always struck me as being so ingenious and such an example
of what can be done by working on metal whirled round at a great speed,
that I may interest some one in telling all I saw.

The works opposite which I stopped found their motive power in a great
wheel just as ours did, but instead of steel being the metal used, the
firm worked in what is called Britannia metal, which is an alloy of tin,
antimony, zinc, and copper, which being mixed in certain proportions
form a metal having the whiteness of tin, but a solidity and firmness
given by the three latter metals, that make it very durable, which tin
is not.

"Oh, but," says somebody, "tin is hard enough! Look at the tin
saucepans and kettles in every kitchen."

I beg pardon; those are all made of plates of iron rolled out very thin
and then dipped in a bath of tin, to come out white and silvery and
clean and ready to keep off rust from attacking the iron. What people
call tin plates are really _tinned_ plates. Tin itself is a soft metal
that melts and runs like lead.

As I looked through into these works, one man was busy with sheets of
rolled-out Britannia metal, thrusting them beneath a stamping press, and
at every clang with which this came down a piece of metal like a
perfectly flat spoon was cut out and fell aside, while at a
corresponding press another man was holding a sheet, and as close as
possible out of this he was stamping out flat forks, which, like the
spoons, were borne to other presses with dies, and as the flat spoon or
fork was thrust in it received a tremendous blow, which shaped the bowl
and curved the handle, while men at vices and benches finished them off
with files.

I had seen all this before, and how out of a flat sheet of metal what
seemed like beautiful silver spoons were made; but I had never yet seen
a man spin a teapot, so being holiday-time, and having to wait for Uncle
Jack, I stood looking on.

I presume that most boys know a lathe when they see it, and how, out of
a block of wood, ivory, or metal, a beautifully r