stion I had asked, and he answered at once,--

"The experiment is already perfectly successful. We have had our
critical moments, but"----

"But now," proudly ticked my watch, "now we have weathered the Cape Horn
of adversity and doubt, and ride secure upon the deep Pacific sea of
prosperity and certainty. You had better blow a note like that through
your Atlantic Bugle. Set your tune high, and play it up loud and
lively."

"It seems to me," answered I, "that the tune plays itself. There is no
need of puffing at the instrument."

While my watch was thus pleasantly jesting, we had passed through a low
pine wood and come out upon the banks of the Charles River. Just before
us, upon the very edge of a river-basin, was a low two-story building
full of windows, and beyond, over the trees, were spires. They were the
steeples of Waltham, and the many-windowed building was the factory of
the American Watch Company. It stands upon a private road opened by
the Company in a domain of about seventy acres belonging to them. The
building thus secures quiet and freedom from dust, which are essential
conditions of so delicate and exquisite a manufacture.

The counting-room, which you enter first, is cheerful and elegant. A new
building, which the Company is adding to the factory, will give them
part of the ampler room the manufacture now demands; and within the last
few months the Company has absorbed the machinery and labor of a rival
company at Nashua, which was formed of some of the graduate workmen of
Waltham, but which was not successful. Every room in the factory is full
of light. The benches of polished cherry, the length of all of them
together being about three-quarters of a mile, are ranged along the
sides of the rooms, from the windows in which the prospect is rural and
peaceful. There is a low hum, but no loud roar or jar in the building.
There is no unpleasant smell, and all the processes are so neat and
exquisite that an air of elegance pervades the whole.

The first impression, upon hearing that a watch is made by machinery,
is, that it must be rather coarse and clumsy. No machine so cunning as
the human hand, we are fond of saying. But, if you will look at this
gauge, for instance, and then at any of these dainty and delicate
machines upon the benches, miniature lathes of steel, and contrivances
which combine the skill of innumerable exquisite fingers upon single
points, you will feel at once, that, when the machi