This one is just begun. Shall I show you how I do it? John, where
are those rolls? Yes, I see. Now, Ma'am, this is the way."

Taking one of the rolls in his left hand, and manipulating it with his
right, our artist laid it upon the top of the unfinished wall, and with
his supple fingers began to dovetail and compact it into the mass,
pressing and smoothing the whole carefully as he went on.

"You see I must be very careful not to leave any air-bubbles in my work;
if I do, there will be a crack."

"When the pot dries?" asked Madame.

"No, Ma'am, when it is heated. I suppose the air expands and forces its
way out," said the man, shyly, as if he were more in the habit of
thinking philosophy than of talking it. "But see how smooth and fine
this clay is," added he, enthusiastically, passing his finger through
one of the rolls. "It is as close-grained and delicate as--as a lady's
cheek."

"But, really, how could one describe the shape of these creatures?"
asked Optima aside of Miselle, as she stood contemplating a completed
monster.

"By comparing them to an Esquimaux lodge, with one little arched window
just at the spring of the dome. Doesn't that give it?"

"Perhaps. I never saw an Esquimaux lodge; did you, my dear?"

"No, nor anything else in the least degree resembling these, unless it
was the picture of the oil-jars. Choose, my Optima, between the two."

"Hark! we are losing something worth hearing."

So the young women opened their ears, and heard the pallid enthusiast
tell how, after days and weeks of labor, and months of seasoning, the
pots were laboriously carried to a kiln, where they were slowly brought
to a red heat, and then suffered to cool as slowly. How the pot was then
taken to one of the furnaces of the Inferno, and a portion of its side
removed to receive it; how it was then built in, and reheated before the
glass-material was thrown in; and how, after all this care and toil, it
was perhaps not a week before it cracked or gave way at some point, and
must be taken away to make room for another. But this was unusually
"hard luck," and the pots sometimes held good as long as three months.

"And what becomes of the old ones?" asked Optima, sympathetically.

"Oh, they are all used over again, Miss. There must be a proportion of
burnt clay mixed with the raw, or it would be too rich to harden."

"And what is the proportion?"

"About one-third of the cooked clay, and two-thirds of the raw."

"And