" This is where the first step toward making tiles is taken," said my conductor. "The chalk is in this box ; it is called spar. This is nothing more or less than flint (taking up a handful of powered stuff from another compartment). Just hard flint rock ground to a powder. This chalk and flint, which come from Great Britain, Maine, Virginia and Tennessee, are mixed in proper proportions and dumped into the mill, where it is ground up and run through a series of sieves to extract all grit and foreign substances." Following the directions of Mr. Lawshe, the writer observed that from the mill, which looks like a big grist mill seen in flouring mills, only larger, the material was conveyed to an enormous vat, where it was mixed with Delaware river water until it assumed the consistency of a big caldron of the Irish national dish, " stir-about." From this vat the stir-about was quickly pumped into a series of wooden molds about six feet long and two feet deep. Each mold held a heavy duck bag which exactly fitted its inside, through which the water and the stir-about would seep, while the immense hydraulic pressure was exerted to bring them together and the water was all squeezed out. Releasing the molds, they were laid flat-wise and open. The bags were deftly turned back, exposing to view a six-foot section of chalk which looked just like a big apple dumpling after being " undressed " and ready to be placed on the table piping hot. Really it looked appetizing, but the old-fashioned boat of brandy sauce, which our grandmothers knew so well how to make, was missing. The two workmen looked like fat, well-fed cooks themselves. The dumpling was seized and quickly rolled into a big cruller, with the jelly left out, of course, and thrown into a long drying trough, whence, after becoming dry, it was conveyed into the main building and broken into small bits, this time, strangely enough, assuming the appearance of a big pile of broken stale bread.
This stale bread or "wad," was next run through another mill, and still another. From the last mill the wad came out as fine and free from grit as a box of lady's toilet powder, and dry as a bone. An endless elevator, with ever-moving cups, caught the powder up as it fell from the hopper and lifted it to the next floor above, where it lay in bins ready to be pressed into tiles.
Following our pudding, not up the elevator, but the more convenient stairway, my conductor halted me by a heavy stamping machine, operated by a red-cheeked youth of eighteen years, who was deftly scraping and putting little piles of the now slightly dampened powder into a mortise let into the steel bed of the machine. This machine looks like ordinary stamp ing machines used in notaries' offices, only about a hundred times bigger. The mortise which the youth was filling was about nine inches square and seemingly two or three inches deep. Filling it to the level, he knocked off the superfluous chalk and touched a pulley that set the machine in motion. Slowly, slowly, a massive ponderous rod of burnished steel be gan to descend, and the powder was crushed into a solid cake of clay by a pressure of eighty tons. Then the bar shot back
and became stationary, while the young man handed the writer the newly made tile to inspect. On the reverse side was the trade mark of the maker, while on the face was a clear and beautifully executed profile of Editor Stearns, of the American Artisan. It was an exact counterfeit of that gentleman in plaster cast—a bas-relief. The process is just the same as is followed in stamping gold eagles in the mint, and the young man at the machine turned out the counterfeits faster than the writer could lay them in a neat pile.
At another machine a pretty young woman with rich ripe lips and suggestively plump arms, was manufacturing fac-similes of a maiden twenty-four inches long, whose brevity of drapery, if anything which does not exist may possess "brevity," would make " Iza" Johnstone turn green with envy and send Anthony Comstock scooting off to get an injunction and a piece of gauze.
From the stamping-room my conductor led me to the die room, where all the dies for the myriad of exquisite decorative tiles are taken. All these dies are cut intaglio, and the most expert workmanship is required. The workmen receive high wages and their hours of labor are short.
The modeling-room was next visited and the writer was in troduced to Mr. Wm. W. Gallimore, the father of American Belleek ware, the finest and most expensive porcelain in the world. Mr. Gallimore extended his left hand.
"You must excuse his left hand," said Mr. Lawshe, "he has only one." " Your loss does not seem to interfere with you much," I ventured.
"No, I do not miss it much now. But let me show you how a model is made," and picking up a nine-inch-square block of what looked like plaster-of-Paris, he began laying on little pieces of dirty dough. While thus engaged he continued chat ting, occasionally looking up at the writer. Now and then he would pinch the dough up in one place with his finger or press it down in another with a little steel instrument which he held between his fingers.
" Just stand there ; that's right ; don't move your head now," and with a satisfied smile he went on with his pinching and flattening out process until I saw a reproduction of myself.
Thus mollified, I was led to the dipping room (that's my term for it), where a score of pretty girls, with sleeves rolled up, were dipping the faces of the pressed tiles into pans of what looked like colored milk. One saucy-looking miss was having lots of fun ducking a famous Egyptian Queen into a pan of chocolate-colored milk and laying her side by side on a shallow vessel to dry. Another motherly-looking woman with soft expressive eyes and gray hair, was, with genuine tender ness, giving a sweet-faced little cherub of Io years a bath in pink milk ; while a dashing-looking Irish girl, with a roguish brogue, was sousing jolly old Bacchus deep into a bowl of mixed ale and porter, which the old fellow seemed to like im mensely. He was unable to consume it all, however, and it trickled down his abundant beard upon his capacious chest.