diamond dust. A flying steel point touched with diamond paste pierces
the heart of the "jewels." Wheels rimmed with brass wisps hum steadily,
as they frost the plates with sparkling gold. Shaving of metal peel off,
as other edges turn, so impalpably fine that five thousand must be laid
side by side to make an inch. But there is no dust, no unseemly noise.
All is cheerful and airy, the faces of the workers most of all. You pass
on from point to point, from room to room. Every machine is a day's
study and a life's admiration, if you could only tarry. No wonder the
director says to me, as we move on, that his whole consciousness is
possessed by the elaborate works he superintends.

He opens a door, while we speak, and you would not be in the least
surprised, in the exalted condition to which the wonderful spectacle has
brought you, to hear him say, "In this room we keep the Equator." In
fact, as the door opens, and the gush of hot air breathes out upon your
excited brain, it seems to you as if it undoubtedly were the back-door
to--the Tropics. It is the dial-room, in which the enamel is set. The
porcelain is made in London. It is reduced to a paste in this room, and
fused upon thin copperplates at white heat. When cooled, it is ground
off smoothly, then baked to acquire a smooth glaze. It is then ready for
painting with the figures.

When all the pieces of the watch-movement are thus prepared, they are
gathered in sets, and carried to the putting-up room, where each part
is thoroughly tested and regulated. The pieces move in processions of
boxes, each part by itself; and each watch, when put together, is as
good as every other. In an old English lever-watch there are between
eight and nine hundred pieces. In the American there are but about a
hundred and twenty parts. My friend the director says, that, if you put
a single American against a single European watch, the foreign may vary
a second less in a certain time; but if you will put fifty or a hundred
native against the same number of foreign watches, the native group will
be uniformly more accurate. In the case of two watches of exactly the
same excellence, the regulator of one may be adjusted to the precise
point, while that of the other may imperceptibly vary from that point.
But that is a chance. The true test is in a number.

"If now we add," ticked the faithful friend in my pocket, "that
watch-movements of a similar grade without the cases are produced here
at