the
file; next, it is japanned; after which it is baked in an oven for
forty-eight hours. It is then ready for the bronzer and gilder, who
covers the greater part of the surface with a light-yellow bronzing, and
brightens it here and there with gilding. All this long process is
necessary in order to make the plate _retain_ its brilliancy of color.

Upon this solid foundation of timber and iron the delicate instrument is
built, and it is enclosed in a case constructed with still greater care.
To make so large a box, and one so thin, as the case of a piano stand
our summer heats and our furnace heats (still more trying), is a work of
extreme difficulty. The seasoned boards are covered with a double
veneer, designed to counteract all the tendencies to warp; and the
surface is most laboriously polished. It takes three months to varnish
and polish the case of a piano. In such a factory as the Steinways' or
the Chickerings', there will be always six or seven hundred cases
undergoing this expensive process. When the surface of the wood has been
made as smooth as sand-paper can make it, the first coat of varnish is
applied, and this requires eight days to harden. Then all the varnish is
scraped off, except that which has sunk into the pores of the wood. The
second coat is then put on; which, after eight days' drying, is also
scraped away, until the surface of the veneer is laid bare again. After
this four or five coats of varnish are added, at intervals of eight
days, and, finally, the last polish is produced by the hand of the
workman. The object of all this is not merely to produce a splendid and
enduring gloss, but to make the case stand for a hundred years in a room
which is heated by a furnace to seventy degrees by day, and in which
water will freeze at night. During the war, when good varnish cost as
much as the best champagne, the varnish bills of the leading makers were
formidable indeed.

The labor, however, is the chief item of expense. The average wages of
the five hundred and twelve men employed by the Messrs. Steinway is
twenty-six dollars a week. This force, aided by one hundred and two
labor-saving machines, driven by steam-power equivalent to two hundred
horses, produces a piano in one hour and fifteen minutes. A man with the
ordinary tools can make a piano in about four months, but it could not
possibly be as good a one as those produced in the large establishments.
Nor, indeed, is such a feat ever attempted