wrapped personage passed, making for the fac-
tory door, and spying him coming, the girl rapid-
ly closed the other one.
"Is there no horse-shed here, Sir?"
"Yonder, to the wood-shed," he replied, and
disappeared inside the factory.
With much ado I managed to wedge in horse
and pung between the scattered piles of wood
all sawn and split. Then, blanketing my horse,
and piling my buffalo on the blanket's top, and
tucking in its edges well around the breast-band
and breeching, so that the wind might not strip
him bare, I tied him fast, and ran lamely for the
factory door, stiff with frost, and cumbered with
my driver's dread-naught.
Immediately I found myself standing in a
spacious, intolerably lighted by long rows
of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene
without.
At rows of blank-looking counters sat rows
of blank-looking girls, with blank, white folders
in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank
paper.
In one corner stood some huge frame of
ponderous iron, with a vertical thing like a pis-
ton periodically rising and falling upon a heavy
wooden block. Before it -- its tame minister --
stood a tall girl, feeding the iron animal with
half-quires of rose-hued note paper, which, at
every downward dab of the piston-like machine,
received in the corner the impress of a wreath
of roses. I looked from the rosy paper to the
pallid cheek, but said nothing.
Seated before a long apparatus, strung with
long, slender strings like any harp, another girl
was feeding it with foolscap sheets, which, so
soon as they curiously traveled from her on the
cords, were withdrawn at the opposite end of
the machine by a second girl. They came to
the first girl blank; they went to the second
girl ruled.
I looked upon the first girl's brow, and saw it
was young and fair; I looked upon the second
girl's brow, and saw it was ruled and wrinkled.
Then, as I still looked, the two -- for some small
variety to the monotony -- changed places; and
where had stood the young, fair brow, now stood
the ruled and wrinkled one.
Perched high upon a narrow platform, and
still higher upon a high stool crowning it, sat
another figure serving some other iron animal;
while below the platform sat her mate in some
sort of reciprocal attendance.
Not a syllable was breathed. Nothing was
heard but the low, steady, overruling hum of
the iron animals. The human voice was ban-
ished from the spot. Machinery -- that vaunted
slave of humanity -- here stood menially served
by human beings, who served mutely and cring-
ingly as the slave serves the Sultan. The girls
did not so much seem accessory wheels to the
general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.
All this scene around me was instantaneously
taken in at one sweeping glance -- even before I
had proceeded to unwind the heavy fur tippet
from around my neck. But as soon as this fell
from me the dark-complexioned man, standing
close by, raised a sudden cry, and seizing my
arm, dragged me out into the open air, and
without pausing for word instantly caught up
some congealed snow and began rubbing both
my cheeks.
"Two white spots like the whites of your
eyes," he said; "man, your cheeks are frozen."
"That may well be," muttered I; "'tis some
wonder the frost of the Devil's Dungeon strikes
in no deeper. Rub away."
Soon a horrible, tearing pain caught at my
reviving cheeks. Two gaunt blood-hounds, one
on each side, seemed mumbling them. I seemed
Actæon.
Presently, when all was over, I re-entered
the factory, made known my business, con-
cluded it satisfactorily, and then begged to be
conducted throughout the place to view it.
"Cupid is the boy for that," said the dark-
complexioned man. "Cupid!" and by this
odd fancy-name calling a dimpled, red-cheeked,
spirited-looking, forward little fellow, who was
rather impudently, I thought, gliding about
among the passive-looking girls -- like a gold
fish through hueless waves -- yet doing nothing
in particular that I could see, the man bade
him lead the stranger through the edifice.
"Come first and see the water-wheel," said
this lively lad, with the air of boyishly-brisk
importance.
Quitting the folding-room, we crossed some
damp, cold boards, and stood beneath a area
wet shed, incessantly showering with foam, like
the green barnacled bow of some East India-
man in a gale. Round and round here went the
enormous revolutions of the dark colossal water-
wheel, grim with its one immutable purpose.
"This sets our whole machinery a-going, Sir
in every part of all these buildings; where the
girls work and all."
I looked, and saw that the turbid waters of
Blood River had not changed their hue by com-
ing under the use of man.
"You make only blank paper; no printing
of any sort, I suppose? All blank paper, don't
you?"
"Certainly; what else should a paper-factory
make?"
The lad here looked at me as if suspicious
of my common-sense.
"Oh, to be sure!" said I, confused and stam-
mering; "it only struck me as so strange that
red waters should turn out pale chee -- paper, I
mean."
He took me up a wet and rickety stair to a
great light room, furnished with no visible thing
but rude, manger-like receptacles running all
round its sides; and up to these mangers, like
so many mares haltered to the rack, stood rows
of girls. Before each was vertically thrust up
a long, glittering scythe, immovably fixed at
bottom to the manger-edge. The curve of the
scythe, and its having no snath to it, made it
look exactly like a sword. To and fro, across
the sharp edge, the girls forever dragged long
strips of rags, washed white, picked from baskets
at one side; thus ripping asunder every seam,
and converting the tatters almost into lint. The
air swam with the fine, poisonous particles, which
from all sides darted, subtilely, as motes in sun-
beams, into the lungs.
"This is the rag-room," coughed the boy.
"You find it rather stifling here," coughed I,
in answer; " but the girls don't cough."
"Oh, they are used to it."
"Where do you get such hosts of rags?" pick-
ing up a handful from a basket.
"Some from the country round about; some
from far over sea -- Leghorn and London."
"'Tis not unlikely, then," murmured I, "that
among these heaps of rags there may be some
old shirts, gathered from the dormitories of the
Paradise of Bachelors. But the buttons are all
dropped off. Pray, my lad, do you ever find
any bachelor's buttons hereabouts?"
"None grow in this part of the country. The
Devil's Dungeon is no place for flowers."
"Oh! you mean the flowers so called -- the
Bachelor's Buttons?"
"And was not that what you asked about?
Or did you mean the gold bosom-buttons of our
boss, Old Bach, as our whispering girls all call
him?"
"The man, then, I saw below is a bachelor,
is he?"
"Oh, yes, he's a Bach."
"The edges of those swords, they are turned
outward from the girls, if I see right; but their
rags and fingers fly so, I can not distinctly see."
"Turned outward."
Yes, murmured I to myself; I see it now;
turned outward, and each erected sword is
so borne, edge-outward, before each girl. If
my reading fails me not, just so, of old, con-
demned state-prisoners went from the hall of
judgment to their doom: an officer before, bear-
ing a sword, its edge turned outward, in signif-
icance of their fatal sentence. So, through con-
sumptive pallors of this blank, raggy life, go
these white girls to death.
"Those scythes look very sharp," again turn-
ing toward the boy.
"Yes; they have to keep them so. Look!"
That moment two of the girls, dropping their
rags, plied each a whet-stone up and down the
sword-blade. My unaccustomed blood curdled
at the sharp shriek of the tormented steel.
Their own executioners; themselves whetting
the very swords that slay them; meditated I.
"What makes those girls so sheet-white, my lad?"
"Why" -- with a roguish twinkle, pure igno-
rant drollery, not knowing heartlessness -- "I
suppose the handling of such white bits of sheets
all the time makes them so sheety."
"Let us leave the rag-room now, my lad."
More tragical and more inscrutably mysteri-
ous than any mystic sight, human or machine,
throughout the factory, was the strange inno-
cence of cruel-heartedness in this usage-hard-
ened boy.
"And now," said he, cheerily, "I suppose
you want to see our great machine, which cost
us twelve thousand dollars only last autumn.
That's the machine that makes the paper, too.
This way, Sir."
Following him, I crossed a large, bespattered
place, with two great round vats in it, full of a
white, wet, woolly-looking stuff, not unlike the
albuminous part of an egg, soft-boiled.
"There," said Cupid, tapping the vats care-
lessly, "these are the first beginnings of the
paper; this white pulp you see. Look how it
swims bubbling round and round, moved by the
paddle here. From hence it pours from both
vats into that one common channel yonder; and
so goes, mixed up and leisurely, to the great
machine. And now for that."
He led me into a room, stifling with a strange,
blood-like, abdominal heat, as if here, true
enough, were being finally developed the germ-
inous particles lately seen.
Before me, rolled out like some long East-
ern manuscript, lay stretched one continuous
length of iron frame-work -- multitudinous and
mystical, with all sorts of rollers, wheels, and
cylinders, in slowly-measured and unceasing
motion.
"Here first comes the pulp now," said Cupid,
pointing to the nighest end of the machine.
"See; first it pours out and spreads itself upon
this wide, sloping board; and then -- look --
slides, thin and quivering, beneath the first
roller there. Follow on now, and see it as it
slides from under that to the next cylinder.
There; see how it has become just a very little
less pulpy now. One step more, and it grows
still more to some slight consistence. Still an-
other cylinder, and it is so knitted -- though as
yet mere dragon-fly wing -- that it forms an air-
bridge here, like a suspended cobweb, between
two more separated rollers; and flowing over
the last one, and under again, and doubling
about there out of sight for a minute among all
those mixed cylinders you indistinctly see, it
reappears here, looking now at last a little less
like pulp and more like paper, but still quite
delicate and defective yet awhile. But -- a lit-
tle further onward, Sir, if you please -- here
now, at this further point, it puts on something
of a real look, as if it might turn out to be some-
thing you might possibly handle in the end.
But it's not yet done, Sir. Good way to travel
yet, and plenty more of cylinders must roll it."
"Bless my soul!" said I, amazed at the elon-
gation, interminable convolutions, and deliber-
ate slowness of the machine; "it must take a
long time for the pulp to pass from end to end,
and come out paper."
"Oh! not so long," smiled the precocious
lad, with a superior and patronizing air; "only
nine minutes. But look; you may try it for
yourself. Have you a bit of paper? Ah! here's
a bit on the floor. Now mark that with any
word you please, and let me dab it on here, and
we'll see how long before it comes out at the
other end."
"Well, let me see," said I, taking out my
pencil; "come, I'll mark it with your name."
ly dropped the inscribed slip on an exposed part
of the incipient mass.
Instantly my eye marked the second-hand on
my dial-plate.
Slowly I followed the slip, inch by inch;
sometimes pausing for full half a minute as it
disappeared beneath inscrutable groups of the
lower cylinders, but only gradually to emerge
again; and so, on, and on, and on -- inch by
inch; now in open sight, sliding along like a
freckle on the quivering sheet, and then again
wholly vanished; and so, on, and on, and on --
inch by inch; all the time the main sheet grow-
ing more and more to final firmness -- when, sud-
denly, I saw a sort of paper-fall, not wholly un-
like a water-fall; a scissory sound smote my
ear, as of some cord being snapped, and down
dropped an unfolded sheet of perfect foolscap,
with my "Cupid" half faded out of it, and still
moist and warm.
My travels were at an end, for here was the
end of the machine.
"Well, how long was it ?" said Cupid.
"Nine minutes to a second," replied I, watch
in hand.
"I told you so."
For a moment a curious emotion filled me,
not wholly unlike that which one might experi-
ence at the fulfillment of some mysterious proph-
ecy. But how absurd, thought I again; t
he
thing is a mere machine, the essence of which
is unvarying punctuality and precision.
Previously absorbed by the wheels and cylin-
ders, my attention was now directed to a sad-
looking woman standing by.
"That is rather an elderly person so silently
tending the machine-end here. She would not
seem wholly used to it either."
"Oh," knowingly whispered Cupid, through
the din, "she only came last week. She was a
nurse formerly. But the business is poor in
these parts, and she's left it. But look at the
paper she is piling there."
"Ay, foolscap," handling the piles of moist,
warm sheets, which continually were being de-
livered into the woman's waiting hands. "Don't
you turn out any thing but foolscap at this ma-
chine?"
"Oh, sometimes, but not often, we turn out
finer work -- cream-laid and royal sheets, we
call them. But foolscap being in chief demand,
we turn out foolscap most."
It was very curious. Looking at that blank
paper continually dropping, dropping, dropping,
my mind ran on in wonderings of those strange
uses to which those thousand sheets eventually
would be put. All sorts of writings would be
writ on those now vacant things -- sermons, law-
yers' briefs, physicians' prescriptions, love-let-
ters, marriage certificates, bills of divorce, regis-
ters of births, death-warrants, and so on, without
end. Then, recurring back to them as they here
lay all blank, I could not but bethink me of that
celebrated comparison of John Locke, who, in
demonstration of his theory that man had no
innate ideas, compared the human mind at birth
to a sheet of blank paper; something destined
to be scribbled on, but what sort of characters
no soul might tell.
Pacing slowly to and fro along the involved
machine, still humming with its play, I was
struck as well by the inevitability as the evolve-
ment-power in all its motions.
"Does that thin cobweb there," said I, point-
ing to the sheet in its more imperfect stage,
"does that never tear or break? It is marvel-
ous fragile, and yet this machine it passes
through is so mighty."
"It never is known to tear a hair's point."
"Does it never stop -- get clogged?"
"No. It must go. The machinery makes it
go just so; just that very way, and at that very
pace you there plainly see it go. The pulp
can't help going."
Something of awe now stole over me, as I
gazed upon this inflexible iron animal. Al-