"We load the ice from here into freight cars," the man explained. "See, the ice house is built in two parts, with a passage-way between. And is this passage is a railroad track. The engine backs a freight car in here, the big doors of the car are opened, and the ice is slid in on wooden chutes, something like the iron chutes the coal man uses. Then, when the car is full, it is pulled down to the city in a long train, with other cars."

 

"And then the icemen come with their wagons¹, get the ice and bring it to us," finished Mab. "I've seen them."

 

"That's right, little lady!" said the foreman with a laugh. And sometimes ice comes to the city by a boat, instead of in freight cars, and the men with wagons go down to the boat-dock to get the cold, frozen cakes. And now you have seen how ice is cut in winter, and stored away until we need it in the summer."

 

"My!" exclaimed Hal, as he looked up at the big ice store-house.

"There must be enough ice in there for the whole world!"

"Oh, no indeed!" cried Daddy Blake. "No enough for one city. And besides this ice, which is called natural, because Jack² Frost and Mother Nature make it, there is other ice, called artificial. That is what is made by machinery³."

 

"Why, can anybody make ice by machinery?" asked Mab in surprise.

 

"Oh, yes, even on the hottest day in summer," her papa told her. "But it takes a lot of machinery. It is done by putting water into small metal tanks, and then by taking all the warmth out of the water by dipping the tanks into a big vat⁴ of salt and water which is made very cold by something called ammonia. It is too hard for you to understand now, but when you get older I will explain. Now I think we had better be skating home," said Daddy Blake.

 

As they walked down to the frozen lake, there was a barking sound from a small shed under which was an engine, that hauled up the ice cakes. Out from the shed rushed a little dog,

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