"There is a noble element in this one-sided pertinacity," I suggested, "and a wise man might humor and use it for the best ends. Instead of attempting to pull these hopeful people back into the church, cannot you urge the church forward to comprehend their position? This impulse,—fanatical as some of its manifestations doubtless are,—might it not be constrained, or at least directed?"

"Never by me!" exclaimed Clifton, haughtily. "I should have to commit myself to all the wild Saturnalia of their moralities before it would be possible to acquire any power over them."

"But surely you might go as far as any one in the advocacy of Temperance."

"Temperance! Why, you forget that I must denounce Temperance as the deadliest of sins, and proclaim Abstinence to be the only virtue. There is a grand State Convention of Progressive Gladiators at present in session in Foxden; all the neighboring towns have sent delegates. Well, it was only yesterday afternoon that Stellato, in behalf of one of the committees, denounced the clergy of New England as gross flesh-eaters who had made themselves incapable of perceiving any spiritual truth. And I happen to know that Mrs. Romulus so successfully manipulated Chepunic, not a hundred miles up the river, that before leaving that town she publicly delivered her lecture entitled, 'Marriage a Barbarism,' and professed to have discovered something far higher and holier than the chain of wedlock."

"I am sure that Miss Patience Hurribattle is ignorant of any such tendency in these new doctrines," I exclaimed, indignantly.

"Doubtless she is," assented Clifton. "There is a hopeful, simple-hearted gleam in her eye, a fine simplicity in her speech, which betokens enthusiasm of a purely religious type. But she is banded with those who would use religion only as a fiery stimulant to the intellect, never as a balm to the heart."

A crunching upon the gravel-walk. A man and a woman were hurrying up to the parsonage. The woman short, sharp, lean; the man unctious and foxy,—yet also representing a chronic state of gelatinous bewilderment. The Great Socialists,—I knew them at once.

"Triumph! triumph!" cried Mr. Stellato, bursting into the study. "Deacon Greenlaw has been converted at last! He will make a holocaust of his cider-mill!"

"He will signalize his submission to the Gladiators by a great Act of Faith!" exclaimed Mrs. Romulus. "His cider-mill will be publicly burned this afternoon at five o'clock. All the delegate Gladiators will march in procession to the ground. Invitations have been sent to the Order of Frugivorous Brothers, the Infants' Anti-Tobacco League,"—

"Two drops of the oil of tobacco will kill a tomcat of the largest proportions," murmured Mr. Stellato, in choral parenthesis.

—"the Principal and Patients of the Lilac-Hill Water-Cure, the Children of the Public Schools, the Millennial Choir, and Progressive Citizens generally," said Mrs. Romulus, finishing her sentence.

"It is the afternoon of Mrs. Widesworth's semiannual supper to the singing-school," hissed Mr. Stellato, maliciously. "The Deacon's cider-mill stands on the hill just before Mrs. Widesworth's house: the procession may be expected to pass before her windows about four o'clock; it will then make the circuit of the town, and reach the top of the hill a little before five, when the exercises will commence."

Some petulant reply seemed ready to spring from the lips of the clergyman, but he checked it, and said,—

"You will have more water than fire: those clouds drifting up over the river mean rain."

"Only wine-bibbers and flesh-eaters are affected by the weather!" responded Stellato, with great contempt. "Sunshine and storm are alike wholesome to the purified seekers for truth!"

"But there is no time to lose," cried Mrs. Romulus. "We have come to ask you, as pastor of the first church in this place, to make the prayer before the torch is applied. You will doubtless decline; but we shall then be able to assure the people that the Gladiators are rejected by an apostate church, which has been cordially invited to become their fellow-worker."

"You had really better think of it," urged Stellato, in a seductive whisper. "The fact is, there is a great excitement, and we are getting on famously. We are bound to carry the county at the next election, and in a year or two we shall sweep the State. We have already enrolled some of the best members of your parish, and you see the Deacon is added to the list. Influential men who join us now will be well provided for when we come into power. We want funds to carry on the cause. Think how much you might do with such men as Prowley and Dastick! Ah, those abominable old sinners, it would be a charity to get something out of them to repair a little of the mischief they have done in the world."

I protested at the way in which these gentlemen were mentioned: they were friends of mine, and highly esteemed citizens.

"Sir, they are Moderate Drinkers," said Mrs. Romulus, with an emphasis which claimed the settlement of the whole question. "The Gladiators are full of pity for the poor lost inebriate. They propose to convert their bar-keeping brothers by a course of moral suasion. But they will ever proscribe and defy those relentless Moderate Drinkers who admit the wine-cup into their families, and—and—why, Sir, did you ever see the stomach of a Moderate Drinker?"

I never had.

"Mr. Stellato has one fourteen times the size of life, colored after Nature by a progressive artist. It is a fearful sight!"

I did not question it.

"Once more, there is not a moment to spare," said Mrs. Romulus, turning suddenly upon the clergyman. "The question is, Shall we put you upon our Order of Exercises?"

"It would not sound badly," insinuated Stellato, perusing the document in imagination: "'Chant, by the Choir; Recitation of Original Verses, by Jane Romulus; Prayer, by the Reverend Charles Clifton'"—

"Stop!" cried the clergyman. "I decline all connection with this business. I have no sympathy with its promoters, and I will never cower before the mob-tyranny they evoke. If I have yet any influence in the First Church, it shall be used in solemnly counselling all youths and maidens of the congregation to report themselves at Mrs. Widesworth's singing-school. The feverish paroxysms of these public meetings are doubtless more stimulating than the humble duties of home, or the modest pleasures at which a lady of Mrs. Widesworth's character is willing to preside; but it is not the wholesome activity which a wise man may promote. And I know that to the children of our public schools such excitement is far more fatal than the cup they never coveted: their minds should be nurtured in moderation and simplicity, even as their bodies are best nourished upon bread and milk."

"Bread and milk!" echoed Mrs. Romulus in shrill falsetto; "say rather loaves of plaster and alum crumbed into bowls of chalk-mixture! This is the sort of bread and milk furnished by your barbarous civilization! But the beginning of the end of this priestridden world has at length come. A new era is dawning upon earth. Much-oppressed Woman asserts her entire freedom; she insists upon her passional independence, and demands harmonial development. She is going to get it, too! Stellato, come along!"

We watched them up the gravel-walk, and then off upon the dusty road.

The minister meditated in silence, as one who had the gift of penetrating beyond his fellows into the mystery of sin. Now he was distrustful: the time might soon come when he would be desperate. I think he almost longed for the power to become a proselyte to any active communion, even if it proposed but a new whitewashing of the sepulchre which hides the corruptions of society. Notwithstanding the vigorous words he had spoken, I knew him for one who could never take hearty satisfaction in denouncing any form of Error, because always fated to discern behind it the muffled figure of Truth. More than most men he felt the pressure of an awful fact which weighs upon such as are gifted with any fine apprehension of these worlds of spirit and matter,—namely, the impossibility of drawing anywhere in Nature those definite lines of demarcation which the mind craves to limit and fortify its feeble beliefs. If the boundaries of the animal and vegetable kingdoms are hopelessly interlaced, it is only an image of the confusion in which our blackest sins are shaded off into the sunlight of virtue.

"But why am I here?" exclaimed Clifton, suddenly starting to his feet. "I can at, least swim a few desperate strokes against this current, before sinking beneath it forever! I can do something to save a few ardent maidens from this whirling water of Reform!

"And yet," he continued, after a pause, "yet many, perhaps most of these wretched people, drained dry by their one idea, are devoted with absolute singleness of purpose to the pursuit of an honest thing. Let us consider whom and what we may be found fighting against. If these subverters do not altogether prove the truth of their own opinions, do they not at least demonstrate the error of those who totally oppose them? Here is Miss Hurribattle,—who will not acknowledge her noble contempt for the accidental and the transitory? I believe that woman desires Truth as earnestly as men desire wealth or reputation!"

"It is so, indeed," I assented. "Her large nature will assimilate whatever grandeur of idea may be found among this acid folk. After a little time she will reproduce in saintly form whatever gives its real vitality to this movement."

"Never!" said the clergyman; "they will put upon her the strait-jacket of their system, and carry her off to doom."

Soon after this we went in different ways through the town.

I called upon Mrs. Widesworth, who had a culinary engagement, and could not appear, and then walked to the top of the hill, where a number of the faithful were heaping tar-barrels and shavings about the solitary cider-mill. Regarding their operations from a little distance stood Deacon Greenlaw; his face wore an expression of grim humor, underlaid by a shrewd intelligence of the true position of affairs.

"They are making lively preparations for your holocaust," said I.

"Well, 't isn't exactly that long word neither," replied the Deacon. Fact is, I just looked it out in the dictionary, and there they call it 'a whole burnt-offering'; but it won't mean all that with me, I can tell you!"

"But, my dear Sir, surely you mean to go under the Juggernaut handsomely, and not squirm in the process?"

The Deacon indulged in an interrogative whistle, and jerked his thumb in the direction of a corn-barn which stood near the base of the hill.

I requested explanation.

"The floor of that corn-barn," observed its proprietor, "is covered with husks about four foot deep. Under those husks is my patent screw and a lot of cider-fixins. That old mill's a rattle-trap, any way. There's a place at the other end of the orchard a sight more handy for a new one. So, when folks get to reading their Bible without leaving out the marriage in Cana, why"—

"Then you have been badgered into this," I said, seeing that the Deacon was not disposed to finish his sentence.

"Well, they've been pecking at me pretty hard; and when Mis' Greenlaw and the girls went over, of course I couldn't hold out. I kept telling 'em that the Lord gave us apples, and I didn't believe He cared whether we eat 'em or drank 'em. But you see I had to knock under."

I questioned if it was going to rain, after all; for the clouds were scudding off to the east.

"They're just following the bend of the river," asserted the Deacon, elevating his chin to bring them within range, and giving them a significant nod, as if to recall an appointment. "These apple-trees will be dripping well before night. I know the weather-signs in Foxden. It is going to rain,—and, what's more, when it does rain, it'll rain artichokes,—and, what's more than that, I don't care if it does!"

III.

A wretched fragment of the singing-class met at the house of Mrs. Widesworth. Professor Owlsdarck had kindly come over from Wrexford to help fill up the rooms; but the pressure of his ponderous attainments seemed only to compress yet more that handful of miscellaneous miserables in the front-parlor. Eight or ten elderly people, one or two undergraduates at home for the college-vacation,—these were the guests. The precautions of Mrs. Romulus had not been taken in vain,—there could be no singing: none, unless—but I trust that this evil suggestion occurred to nobody—we were so lost to shame as to call upon the college-boys to supply the place of our absent psalmody with some of those Bacchanalian choruses with which they were doubtless too familiar. We felt rather wicked. We knew that we were stigmatized by that terrible compound, "Pro-Rum"; we were held up as the respectable abettors of drunkenness, the dilettanti patrons of pot-houses, the cold-blooded connoisseurs in wife-beating and delirium tremens. That we really appeared all this to many honest, enthusiastic people could not be doubted.

Certain perplexing questions, which had fifty times been answered and dismissed, were ever returning to worry the general consciousness of the company:—Is it not best to scourge one's self along with a popular enthusiasm, when, by many excellent methods, it would sweep society to a definite good? Are not the ardors of the imagination better working-powers than the cold judgments of the reason? Should we ever be carping at controlling principles, when much of their present manifestation seems full of active worthiness? Above all, have we not listened to contemptible fallacies of self-indulgence and indolence, and then cheated ourselves into believing them the sober testimonies of conscience?

That some such melancholic refinements were restless in the brains of many I have no doubt. Probably only Mrs. Widesworth and the undergraduates were wholly undisturbed by them. Yet, in spite of this secret uneasiness, there was common to the company a stiff recognition of its own virtue, which seemed to impart a certain queer rigidity to the bodily presence of the guests. Dr. Dastick, for the first and only time in my remembrance, appeared with his trousers bound with straps to the bottoms of his boots. Colonel Prowley had thrust his neck into a stock of extraordinary stiffness, which seemed to proceed from some antique coat-of-mail worn beneath the waistcoat. The collar and cuffs of Miss Prowley were wonderful in their dimensions, and fairly creaked with the starch. The clergyman, indeed, wore his dress and manners in relaxed and even slouchy fashion; but this seemed not due to lightness of heart, but only to weariness of mind. I knew that something had caused him to feel acutely the limitations of his office. One might attribute such feelings to the bass-viol player in an orchestra, who, in whatever whirl of harmony, is permitted to scrape out only a few gruff notes. But there was dear Mrs. Widesworth, so deliciously drugged by the anodynes of Authority that she could shake the chains of custom till they jingled like sleigh-bells.

"Come, come," said this good lady; "why, you all seem to be following the advice of my grandfather Twynintuft,—which was, to let the mind muddle after dinner. He thought it strengthened the voice,—gave it timber, as he called it. But, ah, dear! in these days so little attention is paid to elocution that it's of no consequence whatever!"

"I have endeavored, Madam," said Professor Owlsdarck, with great precision of utterance, "I have endeavored to impress upon my scholars that Socratic wisdom which condemned books as silent: a testimony, as I take it, of great importance to those who would perfect the instrument of oral instruction."

"There is no great elocutionist at the present day," said Mrs. Widesworth with pious regret.

"And little could we profit by him, if there were," rejoined the Principal of the Wrexford Academy. "For, in the present excited condition of our river-towns, men do not strive to copy the moderate virtues of the Ancients, but only to exaggerate their heathenish extispicy."

"Ah, very true, very true," sighed Mrs. Widesworth; "only I forget what that last word means."

"Extispicy," defined the Professor, "is properly the observation of entrails and divination thereby."

"Yet more is to be learned from bones," said Dr. Dastick, decidedly. "I hold that the performances of Cuvier alone are conclusive upon that point."

Colonel Prowley looked doubtful: it would hardly do to question thus lightly the wisdom of Antiquity.

Here Professor Owlsdarck experienced a queer twitching about the corners of his mouth,—an affection which since his poetical address before the Wrexford Trustees had occasionally troubled him.

"At any rate, Colonel," he observed, "we can agree, that, whatever amount of wisdom the Ancients may have shown in observing the digestive apparatus of animals, it certainly exceeded that of our modern philosophers, who are always contemplating their own."

"Truly, I believe you are right," responded Colonel Prowley. "There is my dear friend Miss Hurribattle, who is always coming to me with some new cure for people who are perfectly well. At one time Mrs. Romulus told her that everybody should live on fruits which ripen at least six feet above-ground,—all roots having an earthy and degrading tendency. The last recipe for the salvation of society is, to take a little gravel with our meals, like birds."

Dr. Dastick partly closed his eyes, and said, with some effort,—

"I think that men are befooled with these new explanations of sin and its bitter fruits because the pulpit has done talking of the abiding sinfulness of our inherited nature. When I was a boy, the minister offered us the good old remedies of Baptismal Regeneration or Prevenient Grace, instead of bidding us drench our flesh with water or crack our bones with gymnastics."

At that moment Mr. Clifton turned towards me a half-startled, half-triumphant look. I felt that the idea had been working in his mind, but that he had used another's lips for its utterance. Under undetermined conditions certain minds are capable of employing a physical organization alien to themselves. If I had doubted this before, a foreign influence in my own person would have made it clear at that moment. For I felt a reply uttered from my lips which came not from my consciousness.

"The moral, perhaps, is, that the pendulum has reached the other extremity of the arc of oscillation, and that neither spiritual nor physical regeneration can walk in the fetters of a system."

Some one called out that the procession was passing. All crowded to the windows.

A few musical instruments. Plenty of ribbons and rosettes; also, emblems of mysterious device. Banners inscribed with moral texts. Miss Hurribattle. The school-children in white. Members of the School-Committee in demi-toilet. More banners. Mr. Stellato, as chief of the Gladiators, covered with a pasteboard helmet, and bearing a shield inscribed "TRUTH." (N.B. The inscription in German text by the school-children.) The Progressive Guard with javelins,—papier-mache tips gummed over with shiny paper. A Transparency,—at least it could be used as such in lecturing emergencies,—representing the interesting medical illustration to which Mrs. Romulus had alluded in the morning. The choir singing a progressive anthem, accompanied by extravagant gestures. Other banners waved in cadence with progressive stanzas. Mrs. Romulus and the Lilac-Hill Water-Cure Establishment. Progressive citizens generally; these in various stages of exaltation, and cheering fervently.

"The old infectious hysteria of religious revivals, limited by fresh air and gentle exercise, is it not, Dr. Dastick?"

The Doctor answered my inquiry with a non-committal "humph" of the most professional sort.

"Plato tells us that the Greek Rhapsodists could not recite Homer without falling into convulsions," said Professor Owlsdarck.

"That is very remarkable," said Colonel Prowley, deeply impressed.

"I had no idea that these youths and maidens could justify their eccentric proceedings by so high an authority," observed his sister.

The brother objected. He thought that the same effects could not rightly be attributed to a modern song-writer and the Blind Old Poet.

"Blind Old Poet!" exclaimed one of the undergraduates, very thoughtlessly. "Why, my dear Colonel Prowley, you are blinder than ever he was! Don't you know that recent scholarship has demonstrated Homer to be nobody in particular? The 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' are mere agglomerations of the poetical effusions of a variety of persons; and doubtless all of them could see as well as you and I can."

It was distressing to mark the grief and indignation which suddenly clouded the countenance of my old friend. Was not the last noticeable publication in post-classical literature the "Rasselas" of Dr. Johnson? Had not all those well-disposed people who hailed it as the brightest combination of literary and moral excellence which a mere modern could produce,—had they not lived and died in respectable allegiance to the Homeric personality? To say nothing of a mystical admiration of the Greek hexameters which he could not construe, Colonel Prowley was a diligent reader of Pope's sonorous travesty. He felt like some simple believer in the divine right of kings, when the mob have broken into the palace, and stand in no awe of the stucco and red velvet. Yes, of course I admire original minds,—but then I love those which are not original. And truly there was a stately echo about the old gentleman which always went to my heart.

"Our friend spoke incautiously," I said. "I make no doubt that Professor Owlsdarck will tell us that the preponderant evidence is in favor of Homer the individual, notwithstanding a few troublesome objections."

"He was buried," replied the Professor, "perhaps at Smyrna, perhaps at Cos, perhaps at neither. It is not easy to decide what ancient city may rightly claim his bones."

"He should have shown a sense of their value by writing some verses about them," urged Dr. Dastick. "There was Shakspeare, whose genius culminated in those important osteological observations inscribed upon his tombstone!"

At this point the undergraduate murmured something about "Wolf's Prolegomena," which was lost in a dull rumble of thunder,—as if some giant outside the house had taken up the title and was gruffly repeating it.

And now the storm was coming.

The sky darkened rapidly.

The atmosphere lay thick and yellow.

Where was the procession? Would it not be necessary to omit the triumphal progress through the town, and come to the hill at once?

Windy whiffs—fledgling stormlets—practised in the branches of the Twynintuft oak. The great tree lunged and croaked at them. Suddenly the lilac-bushes were fanned into fantastic shapes. The sumach perked its red pompon like a holiday soldier, and then flung skyward its crimson battle-flag. The wind blustered among the fallen leaves, and slammed a loose blind or two. It grew darker,—still darker.

The procession, at last,—a straggling remnant of it,—was seen pushing up the hill. A remnant indeed! The children, and those having charge of them, had withdrawn. The Committee-men had sought shelter. The Progressive Guard was decimated. Every moment men and women were falling out of rank and hurrying away.

It was a little group that at length collected about the cider-mill. Little at first,—less every instant. It would be necessary to abridge the exercises. We saw Mrs. Romulus mount a barrel and harangue the seceders with furious gesticulation. A book was passed up to her, and she apparently gave out some hymn or ode suitable to the occasion. Alas! there remained no choir to give it vocal expression.

A hurricane-gust struck the town, and drove clouds of dust along the street. Perhaps it was five minutes before the hill was again visible. Then there stood by the Deacon's cider-mill three figures. Mr. Stellato waved a torch about his head, and flung it into the combustibles. A sheet of flame shot madly up. Mrs. Romulus seized one of the abandoned banners and flourished it in triumph.

Again the Twynintuft oak ground its great branches together, and threw them heavenward for relief. The relief came. The dry agony of Nature burst in a flood of tears.

The rain came beating down. It came with a sudden plunge upon the earth, drenching all things. And then, the sharp, curt rattle of hail.

"Come to the middle of the room, the lightning is straight above us!"

We crouched together as the thunder crashed over the house. Rain,—nothing but rain. No ever-varying light and shade, as in common squalls. One great cascade poured down its awful monotony.

A bursting noise at the door. There stood before us Mrs. Romulus, Miss Hurribattle, and Mr. Stellato. Soaked, dripping, reeking,—take your choice of adjectives, or look into Worcester for better. The ladies might have passed for transcendental relatives of Fouque's Undine. Stellato, with his hair and face bedaubed with a glutinous substance into which his helmet had been resolved, did not strongly resemble one's idea of a Progressive Gladiator. Truly, a deplorable contrast between that late triumphant march before the house, and this present estate of the leaders, so reduced, so pitiable!

"Oh, dear, dear, what can I do for you?" cried good Mrs. Widesworth, forgetting all resentment in a gracious gush of sympathy.

"'Only wine-bibbers and flesh-eaters are affected by the weather,'" murmured the clergyman, in bitter quotation, "'Storm and sunshine are alike wholesome to the purified seekers for truth.'"

"Seekers for truth!" echoed Professor Owlsdarck; "one would say that our friends must have been seeking it in its native well."

"As a medical man," said Dr. Dastick, "I shall direct Mrs. Widesworth to provide some dry garments for her unexpected guests. Also, I think it my duty to mention that a glass of hot brandy-and-water would be but common prudence."

"The first part of your advice shall be complied with," assented our hostess,—"that is, if I can find anything to put on to them. As to the last suggestion,—I have, to be sure, a decanter of fine old Cognac in the closet, but it would be almost an insult to offer it."

"The pledge has its important exceptions," observed Mr. Stellato, shivering perceptibly. "'Except when prescribed by a medical attendant,'—I believe I quote the exact language, Mrs. Romulus,—and Dr. Dastick has a diploma."

"Come up-stairs, then," said Mrs. Widesworth, taking the decanter from the closet; "you will all catch your deaths of cold, if you stay another minute."

When the three patrons of Progress again appeared among us, they really seemed to have accomplished their transference to an unconventional and pastoral era. The ladies were quite lost in the spacious habits provided for them. Likewise, they were curiously swathed in shawls and scarfs of various make and texture, and might be considered representatives of any age, past, present, or future, to which the beholder might take a fancy. Mr. Stellato had been got into the only article of male attire which the establishment afforded. This was an ancient dressing-gown, very small in the arms, and narrow in the back: it had belonged to Twynintuft himself, who was six feet two, and as thin as a bean-pole. The thickly wadded skirts swept the ground, or clung heavily about the lower limbs. The garment combined every disadvantage of a Roman toga and a fashionable swallow-tail.

Mrs. Romulus and Mr. Stellato, who had not scrupled to avail themselves of the Doctor's prescription, were still noisily progressive. They at once led a moral charge against Professor Owlsdarck and Colonel Prowley.

Miss Hurribattle, refusing such warmth as might be administered internally, was pale and chilly. She separated herself from her companions, and crossed the room to where I stood. Her face was radiant with devout simplicity. To a soul so pure and brave and feminine may I never be guilty of applying a hard and technical criticism! He is little to be envied who reads Don Quixote's assault upon the windmills as a chapter of mad buffoonery. An ideal knight, without fear or reproach, subject to disaster and ridicule, august from his faith in God and the manly consecration of his life,—is he not rather the type of a Christian sanity? No doubt, such a character seems altogether mad to you, my friend, who pass the window as I write these words. You have huckstered away opportunity just upon the edge of indictable knavery; your ambition has been to be well with the wealth and sleek respectability of the day, to make your son begin life the sordid worldling that you end it, to marry your daughter to the richest fool,—and this you call sanity and common sense! Is it not some Devil's subtlety that deludes you? If Man is an immortal soul, to be saved or damned forever, then he only is sane who welcomes privation, toil, contempt, for a spiritual idea. "Attacking windmills!" you say. That is, they seem so to you. But it may be that your brother's clearer eye and practised intelligence show them the giants which they truly are. But, be they giants or windmills, mark you this: his life illustrates some grade of manly worthiness which the world would be poorer without, while to himself the gain of an unselfish activity is a certain blessedness. I hold it, then, of small matter, that, for a time, Miss Hurribattle mistook two charlatans, three-fifths knavery, the rest fanaticism, for honest workers in the Lord's vineyard. Far better such over-faith than the fatal languor which seemed to terminate Clifton's too close scrutiny of life. A buoyant and never-failing enthusiasm is the divine requital of faithful service. "The reward of virtue is perpetual drunkenness!" exclaims the half mythic Musaeus; "Crucem hanc inebriari," the Church has responded. It has a flavor as of Paradise when a woman brims over with some fine excitement,—and that among godless, unrepentant men.

"The storm has not prevented the accomplishment of our purpose," said Miss Hurribattle, pleasantly; "we have this day made our protest against the most dangerous form of evil."

"One of the most obvious forms, certainly," I replied; "we might not quite agree about its being the most dangerous."

"I must demand all those republican virtues which should be the fruit of our New-England liberty,—I must be strictly consistent."

I jestingly pleaded the familiar proverb about fools and dead men, and observed that there was great obscurity surrounding the real sources of evil in our social life.

"I once thought as you do," said the lady; "but, from my constant association with philosophical minds like those of Mrs. Romulus and Mr. Stellato, much has been made clear to me. They have devoted their lives to the study of modern civilization, and are skilful in the nice adaptation of remedies to all public disorders."

"How long have you known these two persons?" I asked.

"They came to Foxden about a month ago. I had then organized the Temperance movement among the school-children, and devised a scheme for furnishing employment to drunkards who would make an effort to reform. But these more worthy guides of humanity soon reduced matters to first principles. They showed that all Moderate Drinkers and the Church which sustains them must be exposed and denounced. They have done a great work, as you see. Only a few people in Foxden have dared to stand against them. Deacon Greenlaw, one of the most obstinate cases, has just yielded to their persevering treatment."

The rain at length stopped.

Many persons who had appeared in the procession straggled in, looking rather sheepish. The singing, indeed, had failed; but the supper was in prospect.

Stellato was at high-pressure, and ready to lead his adventurous Gladiators into the very camp of the enemy. Mrs. Romulus, wholly above the prejudices of the toilet, would stay and bear him company.

Miss Hurribattle, not having cast out that "clothes-devil" against which the old theologians used to warn her sex, wished to return to her boarding-house. It being by this time dark, or nearly so, I offered to see her home. Mr. Clifton volunteered to accompany us.

"The Deacon's cider-mill is smoking after all this drenching!" exclaimed Mrs. Widesworth.

"The torches of the Bacchantes, when flung into the Tiber, were said still to burn," observed Professor Owlsdarck, after rummaging about a little for an historical parallel. "And here we seem to find a point where the modern enthusiasm for water and the ancient fervor for wine tend to like results."

Colonel Prowley was peculiarly interested,—so much so, indeed, that he shook hands with us absently. Mrs. Widesworth was profuse in entreaties, and then in hearty farewells.

We walked up the street.

A spring freshness was in that autumn evening. The air was purified by the storm, as society is purified after a tempestuous feeling has blown through it.

I think that both of her companions felt abased by the vivid faith which sparkled in Miss Hurribattle's conversation. We were both rebuked by her life-effort for what was high and positive and real. The clergyman, examining the depths of his own sensitive spirit, felt keener contempt for that theoretical good-will, that indefinite feeling of profound desire, which might not be concentrated upon any reality. And it came over me, how mean was the thirst and struggle for a merely professional eminence which filled my common days. As in a mental mirage, which loomed above the thickening twilight, I saw how our paths diverged, and whither each must surely tend. No doubtful way was hers, the single-hearted woman of lofty aims, of restless feminine activity, of holy impatience with sin. She might, indeed, miss the clue which guides through the labyrinth; but then her life would teach mankind even better than she designed. On the other hand,—supposing the position attained which too constantly occupied my own thoughts,—there was an admiration of men, a market-salutation from reputable Commonplace, a seat in a fashionable church, a final lubrication with a fat obituary,—and then? But it was no part of my design to invite the reader into the inner chambers of my own personality, and I forbear.

After a half-mile walk, we left Miss Hurribattle, and turned our steps towards the parsonage.

"I sometimes feel that her instinct reasons more accurately than my poor logic," said Clifton, bitterly; "yet it is a hard necessity to sacrifice our individual faculties of comparison and judgment for the working-power of a fervid organization!"

"No doubt it is a matter for serious question," I replied. "For, as soon as we grow out of our languid and feeble maladies, we grow into the violent inflammatory disorders which troubled our forefathers. The doctors will tell you that this is true of our bodies; and surely the soul's physician may pursue the analogy."

"I can no longer hope to heal any man's soul," exclaimed the clergyman; "it is enough if my own be not wholly lost. I shall to-morrow formally resign the sacred office of teacher in this place. With the final renunciation of the great purpose which once swayed my life, I must renounce every symbol less profound, less poetic. I must make my boast of an intellect which will never let any affection pass the line of demonstrable truth. I once knew how grand it was to stand alone in the world of an inward faith; but now I have renounced all belief in an ideal human being inclosed in this poor body whom it was my business to liberate."

As we stopped at the broad path leading to the parsonage, I ventured to say a few words which I will not set down.

More and more I was drawn towards the high and intense life of the woman in whom all that was wrong seemed but an excess of virtue. I could have besought some fanatical warlike spirit to take possession of Clifton and make him capable of hate, and so, perhaps, of love. Anything to arouse this personator of our human mutability, this vacillator between doing and letting alone!

The wild future of the minister I did not anticipate. Hereafter it may possibly be written, to show such lessons as it has. But on that autumn night he walked up the gray pathway a broken man. The spiritual part was dead; he had lost faith in the invisible. He walked as one in a funeral procession,—ever doomed to follow a dead idea.

* * * * *

THE UNITED STATES ARMORY.

The United States Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, is the largest, best appointed, and altogether the most productive establishment for the manufacture of small arms in the world,—those belonging to the Austrian Government at Vienna, and to the British at Enfield, being greatly inferior both in size and appointments; while the quality of the guns manufactured here is very superior to that at either of those important establishments. Indeed, the Springfield rifled musket is justly regarded as the most perfect arm of its kind which has ever been produced. To attain this desirable point of excellence has required the skill and perseverance of the best mechanical minds which this country—always prolific in inventive genius—has produced during a period of more than half a century. It would be impossible to estimate the value of these works during the existence of the present Rebellion; but some idea may be formed of their usefulness from the fact that twenty-five thousand rifled muskets of the most approved pattern are manufactured at this establishment every month, and the number will soon be increased to thirty thousand. There are at the present time one hundred and seventy-five thousand of these muskets in the arsenal, awaiting the orders of the War Department, and the works are daily turning out enough to arm an entire regiment.

When the Rebels fired upon Fort Sumter, the armory was making about one thousand muskets per month, and three months afterwards the increase amounted only to three thousand, so little preparation had been made by the Government of Mr. Buchanan to meet the great struggle which Southern demagogues were precipitating upon us. Indeed, the number of muskets manufactured during the last year of his administration was less by several thousand than these works turned out during the year 1815; while, during this same period, the residents of streets leading to the railway-station witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a daily procession of wagons laden with boxes of Government arms on their way to Southern arsenals!

Twenty-six hundred workmen are now constantly employed,—the establishment being run day and night,—and none but the most expert and industrious artisans are to be found among them.

The original site of this armory was occupied during the Revolution as a military recruiting-post, afterwards as a depot for military stores, and then as a place for repairing arms. The first shops were on Main Street, and among them was a laboratory for cartridges and various kinds of fireworks. The oldest record in the armory relates to the work done in this laboratory during the month of April, 1778, showing that about forty men were then engaged in the business. Not far from the date of this document the works were removed to the hill, where, enlarged and perfected, they are legitimately the object of admiration and pride. The act establishing the armory was passed by Congress in April, 1794.

The arsenal, storehouse, offices, and principal manufacturing buildings are situated on Springfield Hill, and overlook the Connecticut valley at a commanding elevation. The heavier operations of the armory are carried on in another part of the city, about a mile distant, in buildings known as the water-shops. These are situated upon a small stream which flows into the Connecticut River at this point.

The armory-grounds on the hill cover an area of seventy-two acres, and are surrounded, with the exception of a small square detached from the main grounds, by an ornamental iron fence, nine feet in height. These grounds are exceedingly beautiful, and present every variety of landscape. A beautiful slope to the south and west, covered with luxuriant verdure, and crowned with groves of deciduous trees and evergreens, affords the eye peculiar gratification. The grounds combine also the useful with the ornamental, supplying hay enough to feed a score of horses belonging to the establishment.

There are fifteen buildings used in the manufacture of muskets at the works on the hill, and about the same number occupied as residences by the various officers and head-clerks of the armory. Some of the buildings are spacious and elegant in their construction, particularly the quarters of the commanding officer, and the arsenal, and are arranged in a picturesque and symmetrical manner within the square. The grounds are shaded by ornamental trees, and the dwellings are adorned with gardens and shrubbery. Broad and neatly kept walks, some gravelled and others paved, bordered by finely clipped hedges, extend across the green or along the line of the buildings, opening charming vistas in every direction. Four venerable pieces of artillery, all betokening great age, if not service, standing in the centre of the square, furnish the only outward and visible show of the military character of this immense establishment.

The principal building, as regards size and architectural beauty, is the arsenal, which is two hundred feet long by seventy wide, and three stories high,—each story being sufficiently capacious to contain one hundred thousand muskets. The muskets, when stored in this arsenal, are arranged in racks, set up for the purpose, along the immense halls, where they stand upright in rows of glittering steel, and so closely resemble the pipes of an organ that the propriety of Longfellow's simile suggests itself at once to every observer:—

"This is the arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms."

Unhappily, the last two lines of this beautiful stanza no longer appropriately describe the quiet and peaceful condition of these then harmless arms,—one hundred and fifty thousand of them having been literally stolen from this arsenal by Floyd during the last year of his secretaryship at Washington, and sent South in anticipation and furtherance of the Rebellion, and the remainder issued to the loyal troops raised for the defence of the Union. Thus these grim messengers of death, of whom the poet so sweetly sings, have forced

"The cries of agony, the endless groan,"

from Northern and Southern warriors alike, and rung the

"loud lament and dismal Miserere"

within the homes of every part of our once happy and peaceful land.

The arsenal has another charm for visitors besides the beauty of the burnished arms within, in the magnificent panorama of the surrounding country seen from the summit of the tower. This tower, which occupies the middle of the front of the building, is about ninety feet high by thirty square, affording space upon the top for a large party of visitors. Nothing can be imagined more enchanting than the view presented from this point during the spring and summer months. At your feet are the beautiful armory-grounds, mingling with the treeskirted streets of the city; while beyond, the broad and luxuriant valley of the Connecticut is spread out to view, with its numerous villages, fields, groves, bridges, and railways, and the whole landscape framed by blue mountain-ranges, among which Mounts Tom and Holyoke rise in towering majesty.

The arsenal is used for the storage of the muskets during the interval that elapses from the finishing of them to the time when they are sent away to the various permanent arsenals established by Government in different parts of the country, or issued to the troops. This edifice was constructed about a dozen years ago, and has, until recently, been designated as the new arsenal, there being two or three other buildings which were formerly used for the storage of finished muskets, called the old arsenals, but which, since the Rebellion, have been relieved of their contents and supplied with machinery for the manufacture of arms. A portion of the new arsenal is now used for finishing barrels and assembling muskets, and other parts for storing ordnance-supplies.

The storehouse, offices, and workshops are extensive buildings,—the former being eight hundred feet long, and one of the latter six hundred feet long and thirty-two feet wide.

In a description of the armory printed in 1817, the grounds are described as a perfectly level, elevated plat, situated about half a mile east of the village, from which there is a gradual ascent, flanked on the north by a deep ravine and on the south by a less considerable one, with an extensive plain spreading in the rear, the adjoining parts being uncovered, fronting on the brow of the declivity, and commanding an extensive and beautifully variegated landscape. At the present time, the armory is not only in the city, but the streets at the north, south, and east of the grounds are as thickly inhabited as any other portion of the town. There has, however, been an increase in the population of Springfield since 1817, from two to twenty-six thousand souls. A larger number of workmen are employed within the armory-grounds at the present time than the entire population of the place amounted to fifty years ago.

The water-shops formerly occupied three different sites, being denominated the upper, middle, and lower water-shops, on a stream called Mill River, which exhibits, in a distance of less than half a mile, four or five of the most charming waterfalls to be seen in the State. In 1817 these works comprised five workshops, twenty-eight forges, ten trip-hammers, eighteen water-wheels, nine coal-houses, three stores, and five dwellings.

These buildings were all constructed in the most substantial manner, of stone and brick, and yet remain in an excellent state of preservation. The trouble and expense attending the transportation of the various parts of the musket from one series of shops to another, however, rendered it desirable to assemble them all in one place, and the location of the upper shops was decided upon as the most advantageous. About eight years ago the work of constructing the new shops was begun. Extensive excavations were made for a new dam, the bed of the stream was changed, the sides being laid for a distance of half a mile with freestone, and the basin raised five feet above its former level. Some idea of the magnitude of these works may be formed from the fact that over one million dollars was expended upon the foundations alone, before a brick was laid in the superstructure.

A beautiful and extensive series of buildings has since been erected upon these foundations, covering an area of about two acres, in which the forging, boring, welding, rolling, grinding, swaging, and polishing are done for the entire establishment. The buildings are, for the most part, two stories high, and yet so immense are the operations carried on here that numerous temporary sheds have been erected about the grounds, in which machinery is placed in order to increase the facilities, which, when the works were constructed, were supposed to be sufficient for all time to come.

Since the construction of the new dam, the water has a fall of thirty-four feet. Three immense turbine water-wheels, having a united power equal to three hundred horse, were put in when the consolidated works were first constructed here, which it was supposed would prove amply sufficient for all emergencies; but, since the breaking out of the Rebellion, and the marvellous enlargement of these works, it has been found necessary to put in a steam-engine of two hundred horse-power, to act in conjunction with the water-wheels.

Having thus given a general description of the exterior of the establishment, let us now enter the works and witness the entire operations of manufacturing the musket, seriatim.

The first operation is the formation of the barrel. Formerly these were made from plates of iron called scalps, about two feet long and three inches wide, which were heated to a white-heat and then rolled up over an iron rod, and the edges being lapped were welded together, so as to form a tube of the requisite dimensions,—the solid rod serving to preserve the cavity within of the proper form. This welding was performed by tilt-hammers, which were carried by the water-wheels. Underneath the hammer was an anvil containing a die, the upper surface of which, as well as the under surface of a similar die inserted in the hammer, formed a semicylindrical groove, producing, when the two surfaces came together, a complete cylindrical cavity of the proper size to receive the barrel to be forged. The workman, after heating a small portion of the barrel in his forge, placed it in its bed upon the anvil, and set his hammer in motion, turning the barrel round and round continually under the blows. Only a small portion of the seam is closed by this process at one heat, eleven being required to complete the work. To effect by this operation a perfect junction of the iron, so that it should be continuous and homogeneous throughout, without the least flaw, seam, or crevice, required unremitting attention, as well as great experience and skill. The welders formerly received twelve cents for each barrel welded by them, but if, in proving the barrels, any of them burst, through the fault of the welders, they were charged one dollar for each barrel which failed to stand the test. This method has now, however, been abandoned, and a much more economical and rapid process adopted in its place. Instead of plates of two feet in length, those of one foot are now used. These are bent around an iron rod as before; but in place of the anvil and tilt-hammer, they are run through rolling-machines, analogous in some respects to those by which railway-iron is made. The scalps are first heated, in the blaze of a bituminous coal furnace, to a white-heat,—to a point just as near the melting as can be attained without actually dropping apart,—and then passed between three sets of rollers, each of which elongates the barrel, reduces its diameter, and assists in forcing it to assume the proper size and taper. The metal by this process is firmly compacted, becoming wholly homogeneous through its entire length.

This operation of rolling the barrel is not only a very important and valuable one, but very difficult of acquisition, the knowledge appertaining to its practical working having been wholly confined to one person in this country previously to the breaking out of the Rebellion. The invention is English, and has been used in this country but a few years. Only one set of rollers was used at this armory until the present emergency demanded more. About half a dozen years ago the superintendent of the works here sent to England and obtained a set of rollers, and a workman to operate it, bargaining with him to remain one year at a stipulated salary. At the expiration of the time engaged for, the workman demanded, instead of a salary, to be paid eleven cents for each barrel rolled by him. As he had allowed no one to learn the art of rolling the barrel in the mean time, his demand was acceded to; but after the breaking out of the Rebellion four additional rolling-mills were imported, and of course new men had to be taught, or imported, to work them. The art is now no longer a secret. There are forty men employed, day and night, running the rolling-mills, but, instead of twelve cents, which was paid for welding, they now receive but four cents for rolling a barrel, with the same contingency of a dollar forfeiture for each one that bursts. Four persons are employed at each mill, namely: the foreman, who sees to the heating of the scalps and barrels; the straightener, who straightens the barrel after it passes through the roller; the catcher, who stands behind the roller to catch the barrel when it has passed through; and the fireman. The rollers weigh two tons apiece, and the five sets turn out one thousand barrels per day, one per cent. of which burst in the proving-house.

The barrel when rolled is left much larger in the circumference, and smaller in the bore, than it is intended to be when finished, in order to allow for the loss of metal in the various finishing-operations. When it passes into the roller, the scalp weighs ten pounds; when it comes from the roller, the barrel weighs a little over seven; when completed, it weighs but four and a half: so that more than one half of the metal originally used is lost in the forging, or cut away by the subsequent processes.

The first of these latter is the boring-out of the interior by machines called boring-banks, of which the water-shops contain a large number, in constant operation day and night. These machines consist of square, solid frames of iron, in which the barrel is fixed, and bored out by a succession of operations performed by augers. These augers are square bars of steel, highly polished, and ground very sharp at the edges, and terminating in long, stout rods to enable them to pass through the barrel. The barrels are fixed very firmly in the boring-banks, the shank of the auger inserted into the centre of a wheel placed at one end of the bank, and a slow rotary motion given to the auger, together with a still slower progressive motion at the same time. By this means the auger gradually enters the hollow of the barrel, and enlarges the cavity as it advances. After it has passed through, another auger, a trifle larger, is substituted in its place, and thus the calibre of the barrel is gradually enlarged to nearly the required size. Formerly, six borings were given to each barrel, but at the present time only four are permitted, aside from the rifling, which is a distinct operation, performed at the works on the till, and will be described hereafter.

After the boring of the barrel, it is placed in a lathe, and the outside turned down to the proper size. The piece is supported in the lathe by means of mandrels inserted into the two ends, and there it slowly revolves, bringing all parts of its surface successively under the action of a tool fixed firmly in the right position for cutting the work to its proper form. The barrel has a slow progressive as well as rotary motion during this process, and the tool advances or recedes very regularly and gradually, forming the proper taper from the breech to the muzzle, but the main work is performed by the rotation of the barrel. In the boring, it is the tool which revolves, the piece remaining at rest; but in the turning, the barrel must take its part in action, being required to revolve against the tool, while the tool itself remains fixed in its position in the rest.

A curious and interesting part of the operation of manufacturing muskets is the straightening of the barrel. This straightening takes place continually in every stage of the work, from the time the barrel first emerges from the chaotic mass produced by heating the scalp, until it reaches the assembling-room, where the various parts of the musket are put together. As you enter the boring and turning rooms, you are struck with surprise at observing hundreds of workmen standing with musket-barrels in their hands, one end held up to their eyes, and the other pointing to some one of the innumerable windows of the apartment. Watching them a few moments, however, you will observe, that, after looking through the barrel for half a minute, and turning it around in their fingers, they lay it down upon a small anvil standing at their side, and strike upon it a gentle blow with a hammer, and then raise it again to the eye. This is the process of straightening.

In former times, a very slender line, a hair or some similar substance, was passed through the barrel. This line was then drawn tight, and the workman, looking through, turned the barrel round so as to bring the line into coincidence successively with every portion of the inner surface. If there existed any concavity in any part of this surface, the line would show it by the distance which would there appear between the line itself and its reflection in the metal. This method has not, however, been in use for over thirty years. It gave place to a system which, with slight modification, is still in practice. This method consisted in placing a small mirror upon the floor near the anvil of the straightener, which reflected a diagonal line drawn across a pane of glass in a window. The workman then placed the barrel of the musket upon a rest in such a position that the reflected line in the mirror could be again reflected, through the bore of the barrel, to his eye,—the inner surface of the barrel being in a brilliantly polished condition from the boring. When the barrel is placed at the proper angle, which practice enables the person performing this duty to accomplish at once, there are two parallel shadows thrown upon opposite sides of the inner surface, which by another deflection can be made to come to a point at the lower end. The appearance which these shadows assume determines the question whether the barrel is straight or not, and if not, where it requires straightening. Although this method is so easy and plain to the experienced workman, to the uninitiated it is perfectly incomprehensible, the bore of the barrel presenting to his eye only a succession of concentric rings, forming a spectacle of dazzling brilliancy, and leaving the reflected line in as profound a mystery after the observation as before.

At present, the mirror is discarded, and the workman holds the barrel up directly to the pane of glass, which is furnished with a transparent slate, having two parallel lines drawn across it. The only purpose subserved by the mirror was that of rendering the operation of holding the barrel less tiresome, it being easier to keep the end of the musket presented to the line pointing downwards than upwards. Formerly, this means of detecting the faults, or want of straightness in the barrel, was, like the working of the rolling-mill, the secret of one man, and he would impart it to no one for love or money. He was watched with the most intense interest, but no clue could be obtained to his secret. They gazed into the barrel for hours, but what he saw they could not see. Finally, some fortunate individual stumbled upon the wonderful secret,—discovered the marvellous lines,—and ever since it has been common property in the shop. Each workman is obliged to correct his own work, and afterwards it is passed into the hands of the inspector, who returns it to the workman, if faulty, or stamps his approval, if correct. The next process is that of grinding, for the purpose of removing the marks left upon the surface by the tool in turning, and of still further perfecting its form. For this operation immense grindstones, carried by machinery, are used, which rotate with great rapidity,—usually, about four hundred times in a minute. These stones are covered with large, movable wooden cases, to keep the water from flying about the room, or over the workmen.

An iron rod is inserted into the bore of the barrel, and is fitted very closely. The rod is furnished with a handle, which is used by the workman for holding the barrel against the stone, and for turning it continually while he is grinding it, and thus bringing the action of the stone upon every part, and so finishing the work in a true cylindrical form. In the act of grinding, the workman inserts the barrel into a small hole in the case in front of the stone, and then presses it hard against the surface of the stone by means of an iron lever which is behind him, and which he moves by the pressure of his back. The work is very rapidly and smoothly done.

There are twelve sets of stones in the grinding-room in constant operation day and night. These stones, when set up, are about eight feet in diameter, and are used to within twelve inches of the centre. They last about ten days.

The operation of grinding was formerly regarded as a very dangerous one, from the liability of the stones to burst in consequence of their enormous weight and the velocity with which they revolve; but, about twenty years since, a new method of clamping the stone was adopted, by means of which the danger of bursting is much diminished. The last explosion which took place in this department occurred about nine years ago. The operation of grinding, however, is objectionable also from the very unhealthy nature of the work. Immense quantities of fine dust fill the air, and the premises are always drenched with water, making the atmosphere damp and unwholesome.

In former times, it was customary to grind bayonets as well as barrels; but the former are now milled instead, thus making an important saving in expense, as well as gain in the health of the establishment. No mode, however, has yet been devised for dispensing with the operation of grinding the barrel; but the injury to the health, in this case, is much less than in the other.

When the barrels are nearly finished, they are proved by an actual test with powder and ball. To this purpose a building at the water-shops, called the proving-house, is specially devoted. It is very strongly built, being wholly constructed of timber, in order to enable it to resist the force of the explosion within, and contains openings in the roof and at the eaves for the escape of the smoke, a very large number of barrels being proved at once.

The barrels are subjected to two provings. In the first, they are loaded with a double charge of powder and two balls, thus subjecting them to a far greater strain than they can ever be exposed to in actual service. In the second proving, only the ordinary charge is used.

The interior of the proving-house is very happily arranged for the purpose to which it is put. On the right-hand end of the building as you enter, and extending across it, is a platform of cast-iron, containing grooves in which the muskets are placed when loaded. A train of gunpowder is then laid on the back side of this platform, connecting with each barrel, and passing out through a hole in the side of the building near the door. A bank of clay is piled up on the opposite side of the room, into which the balls are thrown. Only one fatal accident has occurred at the armory during the last two years, and this occurred in the proving-house. When the muskets are brought in, they are placed upright in frames, which, when full, are laid down upon the platform. Five barrels are placed in a frame, and these five exploded while the man was putting them in the proper position for laying them down, and ten balls were plunged into him. No satisfactory explanation could ever be obtained of the cause of the premature explosion.

About one per cent. of the barrels burst under this trial, although under the old process of welding there was a loss of nearly two per cent., or one in sixty.

The pieces that fail are all carefully examined, to ascertain whether the giving-way was owing to a defect in the rolling, or to some flaw or other bad quality in the iron. The appearance of the rent made by the bursting will always determine this point. The loss of those which failed from bad rolling is then charged to the operative by whom the work was done, at a dollar for each one so failing. The name of the maker of each is known by the stamp which he put upon it at the time when it passed through his hands. As the workman gets but four cents for rolling a barrel, he loses the work done upon twenty-five for each one that fails through his negligence. The justice of this rule will be apparent, when it is taken into account that that amount of cost has been expended upon the barrel prior and subsequent to the work done by the roller, all of which has been lost through his remissness. Besides, he is paid so liberally for his work, that he can well afford to stand the loss. This system of accountability runs through the entire work, and tends greatly to the promotion of care and fidelity in the various departments of labor.

There are forty-nine pieces used in making up a musket, which have to be formed and finished separately; only two of these, the sight and cone-seat, are permanently attached to any other part, so that the musket can, at any time, be separated into forty-seven parts, by simply turning screws and opening springs. Most of these parts are struck in dies, and then finished by milling and filing. The process of this manufacture is called swaging,—the forming of irregular shapes in iron by means of dies, one of which is inserted in an anvil in a cavity made for the purpose, and the other placed above it, in a trip-hammer, or in a machine operated in a manner analogous to that of a pile-driver, called a drop. Cavities are cut in the faces of the dies, so that, when they are brought together, with the end of a flat bar of iron, out of which the article is to be formed, inserted between them, the iron is made to assume the form of the cavities, by means of blows of the trip-hammer, or of the drop, upon the upper die. About one hundred and fifty operations upon the various pieces used in the construction of the musket are performed by these dies. Some of the pieces are struck out by one operation of the drop, while others, as the butt-plate, require as many as three, and others a still larger number. The hammer is first forged, and then put twice through the drop. Four men are kept constantly at work forging hammers in the rough, while but two are required to put them through the two operations under the swaging-machine. Sometimes, however, the work presses upon the droppers, and they have the alternative either to work double time—that is, night and day—or to allow other hands to work with them; and as they work by the piece, and are anxious to earn as much as possible each month, they will frequently work night and day for several consecutive days. I have known instances where workmen have worked from Monday until Thursday, night and day, without any intermission, excepting the hour and a half at the morning change of hands, one hour at noon, one at tea-time, and half an hour at midnight,—four hours out of the twenty-four. By this means they will sometimes earn as much as one hundred and fifty dollars per month, although this would be an extraordinary case. The average pay in the dropping-department is about three dollars per day.

There are twenty-four simple and seven compound dropping-machines in constant operation. Some of the pieces are pressed into shape under these drops when cold,—this being the case with the triggers, which were found to use up the dies too rapidly when they were swaged while heated; but, as a general rule, the swaging is done while the piece is at a red or white heat. The operations of the various dropping-machines are exceedingly interesting, and the amount of labor they save is perfectly marvellous.

A large number of men are kept constantly at work making dies for the various pieces required.

When the pieces come out of the swaging-machines, they have more or less of surplus metal about them, which is cut off or trimmed by passing them through machines designed for this purpose.

The bayonet-blade is first forged under a trip-hammer, and then rolled to the proper shape, by an operation similar to the barrel-rolling. The socket is forged separately, and afterwards welded to the blade under a trip-hammer. It is then passed twice under the drop, then milled and polished, when it is ready for use. The ramrod is cut from steel rods about the size required. It is then ground in the same manner as the barrel, and the hammer is swaged on by two operations under the drop. The screw-cutting and polishing are very simple, and executed with great rapidity.

The cone-seating, like every other part of the work done upon the musket, is very interesting. The barrel, after it comes from the rolling-mill, is placed in a forge and heated to a white-heat. A small square block of iron, cut under a trip-hammer to the proper size, is also heated to a white-heat, and then welded to the barrel by half a dozen strokes under the trip-hammer,—the whole operation occupying less time than is required to describe it. An iron rod is meanwhile inserted within the barrel to maintain the continuity of the bore.

The sights are struck in dies, and placed upon the barrel in slots cut for the purpose. They are then brazed upon the barrel, pieces of brass wire, half an inch long, being used for this purpose. Three men are employed in brazing on the sights for the establishment.

The rolling, forging, and swaging rooms are all connected, and form, as it were, one extended apartment. In this are placed hundreds of forges, furnaces, trip-hammers, rolling-mills, dropping-machines, and trimming-machines,—besides scores of sledge-hammers, wielded by stalwart arms. The noise here is so great that no effort of the voice avails to make itself heard, and I doubt if even the loudest thunder would make any appreciable addition to the general clangor. Small iron carts, filled with hot iron, are incessantly whirling around you; red-hot sparks, or melting drops of iron, are flying about the room in all directions; the air is hot to suffocation, and sulphurous from the burning of bituminous coal; while hundreds of swarthy faces, begrimed with grease and dirt, are dripping with sweat: so that you can scarce avoid the suspicion that you have at last stumbled into the infernal regions, and are constantly wondering why some of Pluto's imps do not seize you and plunge you into some horrible furnace, or chop you up under a trip-hammer.

Having survived the examination of this department, you follow your guide from the forging-room down a winding flight of iron steps to the water-wheels, which are situated forty feet under ground. These wheels are so arranged that they can be run together or separately; they are generally run together, and in connection with the immense low-pressure engine.

After the barrels are bored, turned, milled, and straightened, they are next to be polished. For this purpose they are placed in upright frames, each frame containing five barrels. The polishing is done by means of hard, wooden rubbers, provided with a plentiful supply of lard-oil and emery. The rubbers are placed horizontally, with their grooved ends pressing by means of springs against the barrels, which are drawn between them by a very regular and rapid vertical motion. The barrels are also turned around slowly and continuously by a lateral movement, which insures a uniform polish. They are allowed to remain in the first polishing-machines fifteen minutes, and are then placed in a similar machine and go through a second polishing, differing from the first simply in the absence of the pulverized emery,—oil only being used upon the rubbers during this finishing operation. The musket is now completed, with the exception of the rifling, and some slight polishing to be done by hand at the muzzle and breech.

Two polishing-machines are used for ramrods, similar in construction to those above described,—ten rods being polished at once. The bayonet is polished upon emery-wheels. These wheels are made of wood bound with leather, upon which there is placed a sizing composed of glue and pulverized emery. The polishing by this process is very rapid.

The number of workmen employed at the water-shops is ten hundred and forty. The last time the writer had occasion to visit them was upon the recurrence of an important occasion to the workmen employed there, namely, pay-day. A temporary wooden structure has been erected contiguous to the shops for the purpose of paying-off, and upon this occasion it bore, from time to time, various placards, announcing which shop was being paid, according as the paymaster arrived in succession at the various departments. Within the densely thronged shops, and amidst the deafening noise of hundreds of trip-hammers, perambulated a herald, with bell in hand, and placard raised upon a pole, upon which was painted a huge capital letter, thus designating, in alphabetical order, the names of the workmen whose turn had arrived to affix their signatures to rolls for a month's work, and receive in exchange a sheaf of Uncle Sam's greenbacks.

The works at the water-shops are surrounded by a high wooden fence, and guarded by a small force of watchmen armed with muskets. Should occasion require, however, a force of five thousand men, armed with the best of small arms, could be mustered at once from among the workmen in the armory and the citizens of the town. Ammunition of all kinds is stored within the establishment, sufficient for all emergencies.

I stated the number of pieces used in the construction of a musket to be forty-nine; but this conveys no idea of the number of separate operations which are performed upon it. The latter amount to over four hundred, no two of which are by the same hand. Indeed, so distinct are the various processes by which the grand result is obtained, that an artisan employed upon one part of a musket may have no knowledge of the process by which another part is fabricated. This, in fact, is the case to a very large extent. Many persons employed upon particular parts of the work in this establishment have never even seen other parts manufactured, and in general the workmen understand only the process of making the portions upon which they are engaged. The different parts are of various grades in respect to character and price, and are regularly rated, and the work done upon them is paid for by the piece. It will scarcely be expected that I should describe all the processes included in the four hundred separate operations performed in the manufacture of the musket, and I shall therefore content myself with alluding to a few of the most important or curious among them.

The gun-barrel, after it arrives at the works on the hill from the water-shops, is taken to the old armory buildings to be rifled. For this purpose it is placed in a horizontal position in an iron frame, and held there very firmly. The instruments which perform the rifling are short steel cutters placed within three apertures situated near the end of an iron tube which is carried through the bore of the barrel by a slow rotary and progressive motion. The cutters are narrow bars of steel, having upon one side three diagonal protuberances of about one-sixteenth of an inch in height and half an inch in width, ground to a very sharp edge at the top. It is these which produce the rifling. The three cutters, when inserted within the iron cylinder, form upon their inner surface a small cavity which decreases towards the top. Into this is inserted a small iron rod attached to the machine and revolving with it, but so controlled by a connecting cog-wheel that the rod is pressed at every revolution a little farther into the cavity between the cutters. The effect of this operation is to increase the pressure of the cutters upon the inner surface of the barrel, and thus gradually deepen the corrugations produced by the rifling. The rods make twelve revolutions in a minute, and it occupies thirty minutes to rifle a barrel. There are twenty-seven of these rifling-machines in constant operation day and night. This process is the last which takes place within the barrel, and it leaves the bore in a highly polished and brilliant condition.

Among the innumerable machines which arrest the attention of the visitor by the beauty and grace of their operations is the broaching-machine. This is designed to cut out and polish the inner surface of the bands which encompass the barrel and stock. These bands are irregular in shape, and cannot, therefore, be bored out as the barrel is. When they emerge from the drop, or swaging-machine, they are somewhat rough both interiorly and exteriorly, and then undergo a series of operations which leave them in a highly finished condition. The first of these is called broaching. A cavity is made under a huge press in which the band is placed. The broach consists of a steel tool about ten inches in length, and of the exact diameter and form of the interior of the band, and is armed upon its entire length with concentric rings composed of very short and sharp knives. The broach, being placed over the cavity of the band, is slowly subjected to the pressure of the two-ten press, and is thus forced completely through the band, cutting it out as smoothly and easily as if it were composed of lead. The bands are then milled upon the outside by a process called profiling, drilled for the rings, placed upon mandrels to insure the exact shape required, filed, polished, case-hardened, and thus finished.

The hammer passes through a great number of processes before it is completed. It is first forged, then dropped, trimmed, punched, drifted, milled, turned, filed, and lastly case-hardened.

The cone, although one of the smallest pieces in the musket, is yet one of the most important, and requires a great many separate operations in its manufacture. It is first struck in a die, then clamp-milled,—passing through a machine having clamps which hold short knives that shave the entire outer surface of this very irregular-shaped piece; then the thread is cut upon the screw, and both ends are drilled,—this process alone requiring fourteen separate operations. It is then squared at the base and case-hardened.

All the various portions of the lock are made by machines which perform their multitudinous operations with the most wonderful skill, precision, and grace; but it would be impossible to convey to the reader by a simple description upon paper the various processes by which these results are obtained.

Every portion of the musket is subjected to tests different in character, but equally strict and rigid in respect to the qualities which they are intended to prove. The bayonet is very carefully gauged and measured in every part, in order that it may prove of precisely the proper form and dimensions. A weight is hung to the point of it to try its temper, and it is sprung by the strength of the inspector, with the point set into a block of lead fastened to the floor, to prove its elasticity. If it is tempered too high, it breaks; and if too low, it bends. In either case it is condemned, and the workman through whose fault the failure has resulted is charged with the loss.

The most interesting process, perhaps, in the manufacture of the musket is the operation of stocking. This is done in the old arsenal-building, which, with the exception of one floor, is wholly devoted to this purpose.

The wood from which the stocks are made is the black walnut. This was formerly obtained in Pennsylvania, and was kept on hand in the storehouse in large quantities for the purpose of having it properly seasoned. During the last two years, however, Ohio and Canada have furnished the greater part.

The wood is sawn into a rough semblance of the musket-stock before it is sent to the armory. It then passes through seventeen different machines, emerging from the last perfectly formed and finished.

A gun-stock is, perhaps, as irregular a shape as the ingenuity of man could devise, and as well calculated to bid defiance to every attempt at applying machinery to the work of fashioning it. The difficulties, however, insurmountable as they would seem, have all been overcome, and every part of the stock is formed, and every perforation, groove, cavity, and socket is cut in it, by machines that do their work with such perfection as to awaken in all who witness the process a feeling of astonishment and delight.

The general principle on which this machinery operates may perhaps be made intelligible to the reader by description; but the great charm in these processes consists in the high perfection and finish of the machines, the smoothness, grace, and rapidity of their motions, and in the seemingly miraculous character of the performances which they execute.

The entire action of the various machines is regulated and guided by patterns, which are models in iron of the various parts of the stock which it is intended to form.

The first machine in the stocking-room cuts the sides of the stock to the proper form for turning. The second saws off the butt-end, and cuts a diagonal line at the breech. The third is armed with two circular saws, which cut the upper part of the stock to the form of the finished arm. An iron pattern of the stock is placed in the machine directly under the stock to be turned, upon which rests a guide-wheel, corresponding in size and shape to the two saws above. The whole is then made to revolve very rapidly, the guide-wheel controlling the action of the cutters, the result being an exact wooden counterpart of the iron pattern. The fourth machine forms the butt of the stock in the same manner. The next simply planes three or four places upon the sides of the stock, for the purpose of affording the subsequent machines certain fixed and accurate points for holding it in the frames. This operation is called spotting. The next machine performs six separate operations, namely, grooving for the barrel, breechpin, and tang, heading-down, milling, and finish-grooving. These various operations complete the stock for the exact fitting-in of the barrel. The next machine planes the top, bottom, and sides of the stock, and the succeeding two are occupied in shaping and bedding for the butt-plates. The next machine is designed for fitting in the lock, and is the most wonderful of all. It contains two bits and three cutters pendent from a movable steel frame situated above the stock. These cutters, or borers, are made to revolve with immense velocity, and are susceptible of various other motions at the pleasure of the workman. The inevitable iron pattern—the exact counterpart of the cavity which is designed to be made for the reception of the lock—is situated in close proximity to the stock, and a guide in the form of the borer is inserted within the pattern, and controls the movements of the borer. This is ejected by causing the tool to revolve by means of small machinery within the frame, while the frame and all within it move together, in the vertical and lateral motions. All that the workman has to do is to bring the guide down into the pattern and move it about the circumference and through the centre of it, the cutting tool imitating precisely the motions of the guide, entering the wood and cutting its way In the most perfect manner and with incredible rapidity, forming an exact duplicate of the cavity in the pattern. It is on this principle, substantially, that all the machines of the stocking-shop are constructed,—every process, of course, requiring its own peculiar mechanism. The next machine cuts for the guards and bores for the side-screws of the lock, and the two succeeding cut places for bands and tips. The next operation is called the second turning, finishing the stock in a very smooth and elegant manner. The next machine grooves for the ramrod, and the following and last in this department is designed for boring for the ramrod from the point where the groove terminates. This latter work has always been done by hand until the past winter, and there is as yet but one machine for the purpose in operation at the armory, which, running night and day, is able to bore only six hundred stocks. The remainder have still to be done by hand, until more machines are constructed.

The history of the Springfield armory would be incomplete without some allusion to the inventor of the machinery for turning irregular forms adapted to the manufacture of gun-stocks. This was the invention of Thomas Blanchard, then a citizen of Springfield and now of Boston,—whose reputation as a mechanic has since become world-wide,—and was first introduced into the armory about the year 1820. Before this the stocks were all worked and fitted by hand; but the marvellous ingenuity of this machinery made a complete revolution in this department, and contributed to a very large increase in the rapidity and economy of gun-making all over the world.

The same invention has been applied to other branches of manufacture, such as shoe-lasts, axe-helves, etc.; and Mr. Blanchard has successfully used it in multiplying copies of marble statuary with a degree of accuracy and beauty which is truly wonderful.

Eight years ago the English Government obtained permission of the then Secretary of War—Jefferson Davis—to make draughts of this entire establishment for the purpose of obtaining duplicate machinery for the works at Enfield, and copies of the most novel and important parts of the machinery were manufactured for them in the neighboring town of Chicopee; an American machinist being employed to superintend their operation at Enfield.

These works were the especial favorites of the late Prince Albert, who took great pleasure in exhibiting them to his Continental visitors; but no portion of the works received so much attention from him as that occupied by the stocking-machines. In this department he would frequently spend hours, watching the operations of these incomparable machines with the greatest interest and pleasure.

As all of these ingenious and valuable machines are American inventions, and nearly all of them designed by the various expert artisans who have been employed at the armory during the last half-century, it would seem proper and desirable that their peculiar construction should have remained a secret within our national works, and, at any rate, not been freely given to a rival government like that of Great Britain, who might use the arms manufactured by American machinery against the very nation that furnished it. It is probable, however, that the arch-traitor who thus furnished the governments of Europe with draughts of these valuable works had then in contemplation the monstrous rebellion which now desolates our beautiful land, and took this means of weakening us by the universal dissemination of the valuable secrets whereby we were enabled to surpass the rest of the world in the rapidity of construction, and the beauty and executive power of our rifled musket.

When the several parts are finished, they are taken to an apartment in the arsenal to be put together. This operation is called assembling the musket. There are a large number of workmen whose occupations are confined to the putting together of the various parts of the musket,—each one having some distinct part to attend to. Thus, one man puts the various parts of the lock together, while another screws the lock into the stock. Another is occupied in putting on the bayonet, and so on. Each workman has the parts upon which he is employed before him on his bench, arranged in compartments, in regular order, and puts them together with marvellous dexterity. The component parts of the musket are all made according to one exact pattern, and thus, when taken up at random, are sure to come properly together. There is no special fitting required in each individual case. Any barrel will fit any stock, and a screw designed for a particular plate or band will enter the proper hole in any plate or band of a hundred thousand. There are many advantages resulting from this exact conformity to an established pattern in the components of the musket, such as greater facility and economy in manufacturing them, and greater convenience in service,—spare screws, locks, bands, springs, etc., being easily furnished in quantities, and sent to any part of the country where needed, so that, when any part of a soldier's gun becomes injured or broken, its place can be immediately supplied by a new piece, which is sure to fit as perfectly into the vacancy as the original occupant. Each soldier to whom a musket is served is provided also with a little tool, which, though very simple in its construction, enables him to separate his gun into its forty-seven parts with the greatest facility.

The most costly of the various parts of the musket is the barrel, which, when completed, is estimated at three dollars. From this the parts descend gradually to a little wire called the ramrod-spring-wire, the value of which is only one mill.

A complete percussion-musket weighs within a small fraction of ten pounds.

Besides the finished muskets fabricated here, there are many parts of foreign arms duplicated at these works, for the use of our armies in the field,—the most numerous of which are parts for the Enfield rifle, and for a German musket manufactured from machinery made after our patterns and models.

In the arsenal there is a case of foreign arms, containing specimens from nearly every nation in Europe. None among them, however, equal our own in style or finish, while all of them—excepting the Enfield rifle—are very inferior in every respect. The French arm comes next to the English in point of excellence, while the Austrian is the poorest of all.