The kiln was perhaps six or eight feet
across. Four hundred bushels of marble were then in a state of
combustion. The expense of converting this quantity into lime is about
fifty dollars, and it sells for twenty-five cents per bushel at the kiln.
We asked the man whether he would run across the top of the intensely
burning kiln, barefooted, for a thousand dollars; and he said he would
for ten. He told us that the lime had been burning forty-eight hours,
and would be finished in thirty-six more. He liked the business of
watching it better by night than by day; because the days were often hot,
but such a mild and beautiful night as the last was just right. Here a
poet might make verses with moonlight in them, and a gleam of fierce
firelight flickering through. It is a shame to use this brilliant,
white, almost transparent marble in this way. A man said of it, the
other day, that into some pieces of it, when polished, one could see a
good distance; and he instanced a certain gravestone.
Visited the cave. A large portion of it, where water trickles and falls,
is perfectly white.
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