bs strong.

The farther we went the more unsatisfactory the town looked. We were
leaving the great works to the right, and our way lay through streets
and streets of dingy-looking houses all alike, and with the open
channels in front foul with soapy water and the refuse which the people
threw out.

I looked up with disgust painted on my face so strongly that Uncle Bob
laughed.

"Here, let's get this fellow a bower somewhere by a beautiful stream,"
he cried, laughing. Then more seriously, "Never mind the dirt, Cob," he
cried. "Dirty work brings clean money."

"Oh, I don't mind," I said. "Which way now?"

"Down here," said Uncle Dick; and he led us down a nasty dirty street,
worse than any we had yet passed, and so on and on, for about half an
hour, till we were once more where wheels whirred, and we could hear the
harsh churring noise of blades being held upon rapidly revolving stones.
Now and then, too, I caught sight of water on our right, down through
lanes where houses and works were crowded together.

"Do you notice one thing, Cob?" said Uncle Dick.

"One thing!" I said; "there's so much to notice that I don't know what
to look at first."

"I'll tell you what I mean," he said. "You can hear the rush and rumble
of machinery, can't you?"

"Yes," I said, "like wheels whizzing and stones rolling, as if giant
tinkers were grinding enormous scissors."

"Exactly," he said; "but you very seldom hear the hiss of steam out
here."

"No. Have they a different kind of engines?"

"Yes, a very different kind. Your steam-engine goes because the water
is made hot: these machines go with the water kept cold."

"Oh, I see! By hydraulic presses."

"No, not by hydraulic presses, Cob; by hydraulic power. Look here."

We were getting quite in the outskirts now, and on rising ground, and,
drawing me on one side, he showed me that the works we were by were
dependent on water-power alone.

"Why, it's like one of those old flour-mills up the country rivers," I
exclaimed, "with their mill-dam, and water-wheel."

"And without the willows and lilies and silver buttercups, Cob," said
Uncle Jack.

"And the great jack and chub and tench we used to fish out," said Uncle
Bob.

"Yes," I said; "I suppose one would catch old saucepans, dead cats, and
old shoes in a dirty pool like this."

"Yes," said Uncle Dick, "and our wheel-bands when the trades'-union
people attack us."

"Why should they throw them in here?" I