and drove it home-how true it is that the simplest things we see and hear are the result, as a rule, of immense care and labour !

We will visit the Rolling-Mills first. The steel comes from Sheffield, where it is manufactured, in sheets. These sheets are cut into certain lengths-about four inches broad and three feet longby huge shears, and then subjected to immense pressure by being passed under revolving rollers. The object of the pressure is to reduce the sheets to the required thickness. This is a very delicate operation, for if the strips of steel vary in thickness the pens made from them would also vary instead of being all alike thick. This room is large, of recent erection, and the machinery is very powerful.

We may now pass into the room where young women cut out of these strips of steel what are called "blanks," or the flat piece of steel the size and shape of a pen squeezed flat. This is the way the blanks are cut: A solid piece of steel is cut the shape of the pen squeezed flat; this exactly fits into a mould. The strip of steel being put on the mould, and the solid piece of steel descending upon it from above, cuts the pen clean out. The sheet is then passed on, and by an ingenious arrangement it is allowed to go no further than the width of the pen, and another is cut; and so on till the sheet is used up. Each operative can cut these blanks at the rate of about thirty thousand per day, which, if laid end on end, would make a column of from three to four thousand feet high. The perforated strips of steel are rolled up and sent back to Sheffield to be made into sheet steel again. This fact suggested to my mind the proverb, "Waste not, want not." Take care of the remnants; there is a use for them all.

We will now pass the "blanks ” to other girls to have holes, or ink reservoirs, pierced in them. In some cases the blank is slit at each side as well as pierced by the same stroke of the press. This work is done by means of dies cut in solid steel, and made to descend upon the "blank" with a quick, sharp blow. The girls are extraordinarily quick at this operation. The pen is put in its place, the die descends, and it is poked away with a stick to make room for another before you could count three. When the pen that is being made is required to hold a larger quantity of ink the holes are more numerous. This fact will guide you in selecting a suitable pen.

At present the flat piece of pierced steel is very hard and unbending. Before it can be put through succeeding processes it must be softened. This process is called the "annealing process," and is done in this way:-The pierced bits of steel are put in iron boxes, which are put into large ovens or "muffles," heated to a red heat. There they remain for a certain time, and when taken out and cooled they are so soft you can bend them into any shape. How beautiful an illustration is this of God's work of grace in the heart! How often God puts us in the furnaces of trial or affliction or adversity in order to soften us-to prepare us for higher states of spiritual life!

Furnaces heated seven times hotter than is their wont are but the stronger proofs of God's love for us.

The soft bits of steel are now passed on to girls and young women, who stamp upon them the number, the maker's name, and the description of the pen. Hand presses-in some cases presses worked by the feet-are again used. The letters are cut out in steel by workmen on the spot. Anyone giving a large order may have his name stamped on the pens. The heavy blow required for stamping makes a loud noise, and to stand in a room where perhaps fifty presses are at work is like standing 'in the midst of a regiment engaged in rapid rifle practice. We noticed that the rooms were light and airy, and that the operatives were neatly dressed and healthy looking.

So far the pen has continued flat. The next thing is to bend it into a semi-circular shape. This process is called "snoppering," and it is done by means of a die and punch of the shape of the pen. The flat bit of steel being put between the die and the punch, one turn of the screw is sufficient to bend it the required shape. The barrel pens, or "magnum-bonums," take two or three taps-a slower operation. These magnum-bonums, by-the-by, are not a whit better than the other pens; but as some people-old-fashioned people it is said-like them, they must be made. Alas! how slow we all are to give up what we have been used to, even though it entail waste and unnecessary labour to stick to it!

The pens are now ready to be hardened. This is a beautiful process. Huge furnaces, or "muffles," are heated red-hot by means of Siemens' gas apparatus, the gas being manufactured on the premises. Iron boxes filled with pens are put into the "muffles." When redhot, a man lifts the boxes out with a pair of tongs, hangs the lid on a hook, and turns the box upside down over a vat of oil. The redhot pens fall into the oil, and cooling suddenly, become hardened. To remove the oil, the pens are put into circular barrels, with sawdust, and made to revolve by machinery. This effectually cleans them.

This hardening process, however, makes the pens so brittle that if you attempted to bend them they would at once break. To correct this they must be "tempered." This is done by subjecting them to a gentle heat for a certain length of time and then plunging them into cold water.

The pens are now taken into the grinding-rooms, where, with wonderful quickness and dexterity, the nibs are ground longitudinally and transversely upon wheels lined with emery, and turning at the rate of two thousand revolutions per second. Great delicacy is required in this operation, as a touch too much would make the pen too soft, a touch too little would leave it too hard. The pens are picked up with a pair of nippers, allowed to touch the emery two or three times, a stream of sparks flying off at each touch, and the operation is complete. This is a rather unhealthy process, as many

of the small particles of steel find their way to the operators' chests.

The next operation is that of slitting the nib. This is done by means of the screw press and a chisel-cutter, with a neatness that could not be surpassed.

Though to all appearance the pen is now complete, yet it will not write. If you take one up and bend the point on your thumb nail you find out that it scratches the nail. The edges of the pens are jagged, and must be smoothed. Besides this, so far as appearances are concerned, they are very unsightly. They want polishing. These two ends are answered by putting the pens into boxes with very small bits of stone, and the boxes being made to revolve by machinery the friction serves the double purpose of smoothing the points and polishing the pens.

At last we have, got the pens fit for use. But they are all of a bright steel colour, and as the public have an eye to beauty as well as utility, and are willing to sacrifice a little utility for the sake of beauty, other processes now begin, having for their object_the beautifying of the pens. All that is necessary in colouring them either blue or brown is to hold them over a charcoal stove till the required tint is obtained. To give them a brilliant appearance they are put into a solution of shellac and naphtha, and then dried by exposure to a gentle heat. Some kinds of pens are gilded or silvered by being dipped into a prepared liquid; others are bronzed, and others galvanised.

It is a pity, we thought, that the processes commencing with the grinding and including the colouring and burnishing, should lessen the real value of the pen, by removing or making less thin the hard outer coating of the steel, for steel has a hard outer coat, like the bark of a tree; but so it is. A pen would last two or three times as long were it not ground and coloured and burnished. But as the public will have the elegant appearance, so the manufacturers must supply it; and on the whole it is good for trade. In pens, and sometimes in other things, we can't have the inward worth and the elegant appearance too. We must make our choice. But, after all, that is a sad choice which prefers the dazzling sham to the dull-looking solid worth.

Pen-holders and pen-boxes are also made on the premises; but as these are comparatively simple operations, we need not describe them.

We were taken into a large room where the pens, having been carefully examined, are counted and put into boxes. One gross is counted, and the remainder are weighed from it so accurately that there is seldom one pen too much or too little in the boxes. The weigher hands over each gross to girls, who with magical rapidity shuffle them into their places in the boxes, which are then wrapped up in paper, banded together in fives, and passed on to the packer or into the store-room, from whence they are taken into the

world-the cold, cruel' world-which abuses them awfully to-day and honours them right royally to-morrow! Such is the lot of pens and men. Who shall tell the history of a pen, and where do all the bad pens go to? These are for the present unsolvable mysteries. Let us, however, after having seen what trouble is taken in making them, take a little trouble in using them well. J. HUGHES.

MR. LEIGH'S SURPRISE;:

OR,

A PLEASANT AFTERNOON IN WINTON SUNDAY-SCHOOL.

BY J. CAPES STORY.

INTON was a little queen among towns. If I were to call it charming, you would think, perhaps, of one of those places either inland or by the seaside to which people go for their summer holidays-a place where half the houses hang out boards with the words "lodgings to let" painted upon them. But Winton was not a resort of the sick, the jaded, and the lazy, or of the seeker of rest and pleasure. No excursion-trains brought their hundreds and thousands from distant busy centres of industry, glad to be released for a day from the whirl and clatter and toil of the mill' and the forge. And yet they might have done; for at Winton there were hills as high as any excursionist would care to climb, and breezes on the top as refreshing, with views therefrom as delightful, as are to be found at almost any watering-place in the kingdom. And, besides the hills, there was the beautiful river, wide and winding, with trees upon its banks whose boughs hung gracefully over the water, and cast their dancing shadows across. True, the sky was sometimes a little clouded with the smoke from the Winton factories; for in these days work and smoke somehow nearly always go together. And the people there had to work like others, and they sometimes said it would be a bad day for them when the big chimneys did not smoke at least a little. And if the water of the river was not quite as clear, and the fishing as good as they used to be, well, that must be borne with too. There was a talk of purifying the rivers of the country in some way. "So perhaps," said the people, "we shall have an alteration by-andby."

There was a Sunday-school at Winton, which both outside and inside was quite in keeping with the pretty little town. It was not, like so many schools, a shabby, dirty pile of bricks and mortar, hidden away in some back street, and there almost buried among other build

ings which crowd around and keep the light out of it: but it was a good, substantial, and even ornamental structure, which stood several yards back, on an ample space of ground, by the side of the main road going through the town. In fact, Winton School had become quite noted in the neighbourhood as one which all school-builders might imitate, but need scarcely expect to excel.

It will not surprise the reader to learn that visitors frequently came to see for themselves the wonderful school of which they had heard. Indeed, it had become no small part of the duty of Mr. Grace, the genial, kind-hearted superintendent, to act as showman to the numerous persons who came to inspect the premises.

On the day of which I write, Mr. Grace had received a personal friend, who had come from an adjacent place for the same purpose which had brought so many others. It was a fine autumn afternoon, and there was hardly a garden in the neighbourhood which could show a fairer face than that in which stood Winton School. The strip of grass on either side the walk leading to the door, protected with a low and neatly-twined fence of wicker-work, the pretty border of light-green featherfew, the geraniums and calceolarias, and then the tall, strong dahlia plants, which were just beginning to unfold their large and variously-coloured blooms, told of the exercise of no small amount of horticultural skill.

"I confess," said Mr. Leigh, for that was the name of the visitor, "that I was very much delighted as I came along the tidy gravel walk to see the well-trimmed shrubs, so strong and healthy, and especially to see the flowers. Why how ever do you manage the flowers? For it certainly seems strange to me that you should think of having flowers growing about a Sunday-school, and to see that they are not plucked, the beds trampled upon, and the shrubs destroyed. "Well," said Mr. Grace, "you are not the first that has expressed the same surprise."

"But," rejoined the visitor, "I see I might have uttered a similar astonishment about the flowers within the building." For, looking round from the position the two gentlemen occupied, which was near the desk, Mr. Leigh could not but notice that every class had a small table, and that upon nearly every table was a jug or a pretty vase, holding cut flowers. "Clearly," continued Mr. Leigh, believe in the flowers."

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"Yes," replied the superintendent, "we believe in them because the scholars do."

"What do you mean?" said the somewhat puzzled visitor.

"Well," said Mr. Grace, "everyone knows how children take to the flowers. Turn that class of little ones," said he, pointing to a group of little girls gathered round their teacher," into a field, and see if they don't, first thing, begin to fill their hands and pinafores with the buttercups and daisies, and then make wreaths of them to deck their chubby faces with. That's because they love the flowers. Well, and have you never noticed how fond they are of bringing