tables. It was here
suffered to cool for some moments, and then, by means of a pontil tipped
with molten glass, carried away to be fire-polished.

This was a lens, such as are used to increase the light in ships'
cabins, staterooms, etc. Another and coarser quality, not lenses, but
simple disks of greenish glass, about four inches in thickness by twelve
in diameter, were stacked ready for removal at a short distance, and the
whole association made Miselle so intolerably sea-sick that she sidled
away to watch the manufacture of some decanters, "sech as is used in
bar-rooms, mostly, Ma'am," as the principal workman confided to her.
These were first moulded in the shape of great tumblers with an
excessively ugly pattern printed on the sides, then softened in a
glory-hole, and brought to a workman, who, by means of plyers and
battledoor, elongated and shaped the neck, leaving a queer, ragged lip
at the top. The decanter was then passed to Miselle's confidant, who
struck off this lip with the edge of his plyers. An attendant then
presented to him a lump of melted glass on the end of his pontil, and
the workman, deftly twisting it round the neck of his decanter, clipped
it off with a pair of scissors, and proceeded to smooth and shape it by
means of the plyers.

These decanters were probably to be used in conjunction with some Gothic
goblets, whose press stood in the immediate vicinity. These were
greenish in color, thick and unwieldly in shape, and ornamented with
alternate panels of vertical and horizontal stripes.

Miselle was still lost in contemplation of these goblets when Monsieur
approached.

"No," exclaimed she, pointing at them,--"no true patriot should
congratulate his countrymen upon the plenitude of such articles as that!
Far better for the national growth in art that we should all revert to
clam-shells!"

"Come, then, and see if we cannot find something more to your fancy in
the cutting-room," laughed Monsieur; and Miselle willingly followed
through the green yard, and up some stairs to a sunny chamber, or rather
hall, lined on either hand with a row of busy workmen, each seated
behind a whirring wheel, to which he held the surface of whatever
article he was engaged in cutting, or rather grinding.

These wheels were arranged in a progressive order. The first were of
stone or iron, fed with sand and water, which trickled slowly down upon
them from a trough overhead. These rapidly cut away the surface of g