juncture a small boy rushed up, and, thrusting a stick into the
still red-hot lantern, dexterously tilted it up and carried it away to a
furnace of different construction from the first, into one of whose open
doors he thrust it, and then returned to wait for another.

This furnace, called a flashing-furnace, was round like the first, and
was fitted with eight or ten doors, from all of which the flames rushed
eagerly, and in a very startling fashion.

"This is fed constantly with coal-oil," expounded Cicerone. "It is
brought in pipes, as you see, and drips down inside. These doors are
called 'glory-holes'"----

"Aureoles, perhaps," suggested Optima, in a whisper.

"And the lanterns, or whatever is in hand, are brought here after
pressing, and put in to get well heated through again before they are
given to the finisher. Fire-polishing they call it. Here you see one
just ready to be taken out."

"He will drop it," cried Miselle, as another boy, wielding a pontil with
a lump of melted glass at the end, darted before her, and, pressing this
heated end against the bottom of the lantern, picked it up and carried
it away, over his shoulder, as if he were a stray member of some
torch-light procession.

"Not he! He's too well used to his trade," laughed Monsieur. "Now come
and see the finishing process."

Following the steps of the young wide-awake, Miselle saw him deliver the
pontil, with the lantern still attached, to a listless individual seated
upon a bench whose long iron arms projected far in front of him, while
an idle pontil lay across them. This the boy snatched up and departed,
while the man, suddenly rousing himself, began to roll the new pontil up
and down the arms of his bench with his left hand, while with a pair of
compasses in his right he carefully gauged the diameter of the revolving
lantern, and then smoothed away its rough-cast edges by means of a
blackened bit of wood, somewhat of the shape, and bearing the name, of a
battledoor.

The finishing over, another stick was thrust inside the lantern, and it
was separated from the pontil by the application of a bit of cold iron.
It was then carried to the mouth of a long gallery-like oven, moderately
heated, and fitted with a movable floor, upon which the articles put in
at the hot end were slowly transported through a carefully graduated
atmosphere to the cool end at a distance of perhaps a hundred feet, and
on their arrival were ready to be packed for t