the most of a Room--Handling
Cartoons--Cleanliness--Dust--The Selvage Edge--Drying a "Badger"--A
Comment.

Here, now, follow some little practical hints upon work in general; mere
receipts; description of time-saving methods and apparatus which I have
separated from the former part of the book; partly because they are
mostly exceptions to the ordinary practice, and partly because they are
of general application, the common-sense of procedure, and will, I hope,
after you have learnt from the former parts of the book the individual
processes and operations, help you to marshal these, in order and
proportion, so as to use them to the greatest advantage and with the
best results. And truly our stained-glass methods are most wasteful and
bungling. The ancient Egyptians, they say, made glass, and I am sure
some of our present tools and apparatus date from the time of the
Pyramids.

A CLUMSY KILN-FEEDER.

What shall we say, for instance, of this instrument (fig. 64), used for
loading some forms of kiln?

[Illustration: FIG. 64.]

The workman takes the ring-handle in his right hand, rests the shaft in
the crook of his left elbow, puts the fork under an iron plate loaded
with glass and weighing about forty pounds, and then, with tug and
strain, lifts it, ready to slip off and smash at any moment, and,
grunting, transfers it to the kiln. A little mechanical appliance would
save nine-tenths of the labour, a stage on wheels raised or lowered at
will (a thing which surely should not be hard to invent) would bring it
from the bench to the kiln, and _then_, if needs be, and no better
method could be found, the fork might be used to put it in.

Meanwhile, as a temporary step in the right direction, I illustrate a
little apparatus invented by Mr. Heaton, which, with the tray made of
some lighter substance than iron, of which he has the secret, decreases
the labour by certainly one-third, and I think a half (fig. 65).

[Illustration: FIG. 65.]

It is indeed only a sort of half-way house to the right thing, but,
tested one against the other with equal batches of plates, its use is
certainly less laborious than that of the fork. And that is a great
gain; for the consequence of these rough ways is that the kiln-man, whom
we want to be a quiet, observant man, with plenty of leisure and with
all his strength and attention free to watch the progress of a process
or experiment, like a chemist in his laboratory, has ofte