AS IMPERIAL ARTIZAN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3205, 6 October 1881, Page 4

AS IMPERIAL ARTIZAN.

In the Cabinet of Curiosities at the National Museum of St Petersburg, Russia, is a bar of iron—a plain looking, ugly, dingy, hammered mass of which attracts about as many of the visitors aa anything there exposed. Only a bar of common iron, weighing thirty-six pounds avoirdupois, and yet it would require a big fortune to buy it. But it has a story : While Peter the Great was on the throne of Eussia, during one of his intensely practical fits, he made his way, with a number of his court, to the celebrated forges of Muller, at Tstria, where he remained a month, giving himself to the work of learning the mysteries of the trade. At the end of a month he took a force ; stripped himself for the work; caused his own attendants —members of the court —to blow the bellows, attend to the fire, and bring coals ; and thus, with his own hands, he forged out eighteen poods of iron, and put his own personal mark on each. (A pood is a Busweight of 86 lbs. When Peter had finished his _ work, he called the proprietor, and exhibited the specimens of his ekill; and they were found to be good—" good enough for anybody,' the superintendent said. " Then," said Peter, " what can you pay me ? Or, what do you pay your workmen for just such work ? " The master informed him, but wished to pay him much more. " For," said he, " that iron which you have forged, and upon which you have put your own mark, is worth more to me than other iron."

" That is nothing to me," persisted Peter. "fi ccording to your prices to |your workmen I have earned eighteen altinas. Thar sum will just purchase for me a pair of shoes, of which T am much in need." So the great Czar received his eighteen altinas, and purchased n. pair of shoes ; and those shoec ho exhibited with intense satisfaction. " They are mine," tie-^ Q «I<L " for I earned them by the sweat of my brow." , „ It i 3 one of those pood?, forged by Peter, at IstTJa, row on exhibition in the cabinet at St. Petersburg.