e next room, in contrast with all they had passed through previously,
was neat and had no repulsive odors. Here the sheets of horn as they came
from the presses were first cut by delicate circular saws into blanks of
the exact size for the kind of combs to be made, after which they were
run through a planer, which gave them the proper thickness.

"What do you mean by 'blanks'?" Paul asked, as his uncle used the term.

"You can look in the dictionary to find its exact meaning," was the
answer. "But you will see what it is in practice at this machine."

[Illustration: "IN SOME REMOTE CORNER OF SPAIN."]

They stepped to another part of the room; and here Paul saw the "blanks"
placed in the cutting-machine standing over a hot furnace, where, after
being softened by the heat, they were slowly moved along, while a pair of
thin chisels danced up and down, cutting through the centre of the blank
at each stroke. When it had passed completely through, an assistant took
the perforated blank and pulled it carefully apart, showing two combs,
with the teeth interlaced. After separation they were again placed
together to harden under pressure, when the final operations consisted of
bevelling the teeth on wheels covered with sand-paper, rounding the
backs, rounding and pointing the teeth; after which came the polishing,
papering and putting in boxes.

"I suppose they go all over the country," said Paul as he glanced into
the shipping-room.

"Much further than that," was the reply. "We never know how far they go;
for the wholesale dealers, to whom the combs are shipped from the
manufactory, send them into all the odd corners of the earth. Every
little dealer must sell combs, and in the very nature of the business
they frequently pass through a great many hands before reaching the user,
so at the last price is many times what the makers received for them. I
suppose it often happens that horns which have been sent thousands of
miles to work up are returned to the very regions from which they came,
in some other form, increased very many fold in value by their long
journey. Or a horn may come from the remoter parts of South America to be
wrought here in Massachusetts, and then be shipped from point to point
till it reaches some remote corner of Africa, Spain, or Siberia, as an
article of barter. And even different parts of the same horn may be at
the same moment decking the person of a New York dandy and unsnarling the
tangled locks o