ieces on the summer veranda.

But before the silks and wools go to the weaving they are treated to a
beauty-bath in the dye-room. Hanks of wool and skeins of silk are but
neutral matters, coming to the factory devoid of individuality, mere
pale, soft bulk.

A room apart, somewhere away from the studio of design and the rooms
where the looms stand stolid, is a laboratory of dyes, a place which
looks like a farmhouse kitchen on preserving day. You sniff the air as
you go in, the air that is swaying long bunches of pendulous colour,
and it smells warm and moist and full of the suggestions of magic.

Over a big cauldron two men are bending, stirring a witches' broth to
charm man's eye. One of the wooden paddles brings up a mass from the
heavy liquid. It is silk, glistening rich, of the colour of melted
rubies. Upstairs the looms are making it into a damask background onto
which are thrown the garlands Boucher drew and Tessier loved to work.

Dainties fished up from another cauldron are strung along a line to
dry, soft wool and shining silk, all in shades of grapes, of asters,
of heliotropes, telling their manifest destiny. And beyond, are great
bunches of colour, red which mounts a quivering scale to salmon pink,
blue which sails into tempered gray, greens dancing to the note of
the forest. It is a nature's workshop, a laboratory where the rainbow
serves, apprenticed.

Jars, stone jars, little kegs, all ugly enough, are standing against
the wall. But uncover one, touch the thick dark stuff within, and
feast your eye on the colour left on a curious finger-tip. You are
close to the cochineal, to indigo, and all the wonderful alchemy of
colour.

Aniline? Not a bit of the treacherous stuff. It takes the eye, but it
is a fickle friend. They say a mordant has been found to stay the
flight of its lovely colours. Perhaps; it may be. But what weaver of
tapestry would be willing to confide his labour to the care of a dye
that has not known the test of ages? Aniline dye, says the director of
a tapestry factory, may last twenty years--but twenty years is nothing
in the life of a tapestry. Over in Paris, at the Gobelins, a master
rules as chemist of the dyes, with the dignity of a special laboratory
for making them.

In America, with no government assuming the expense, the dyes are
bought in such form that only expert dyers can use them in the few
factories which exist. But no new hazards are taken. The matter is too
serious. E