elf very knowing.

Bob was right. One of the oak-planks had been measured and marked for
mortice-holes in various ways according to pattern, and was now handed
over to the guardian of the machine, who, having had it placed on
rollers, pushed it under the chisel and touched a handle. Down came the
implement, and cut into the solid wood as if it had been mere putty. A
dozen cuts or so in one direction, then round it went--for this chisel
could be turned with its face in either direction without stopping it
for the purpose--another dozen cuts were made, and an oblong hole of
three or four inches long by two broad and three deep was made in the
plank in a few seconds.

Even Mrs Marrot had sufficient knowledge of the arts to perceive that
this operation would have cost a human carpenter a very much greater
amount of time and labour, and that therefore there must have been a
considerable saving of expense. Had she been aware of the fact that
hundreds of such planks were cut, marked, morticed, and turned out of
hands every week all the year round, and every year continuously, she
would have had a still more exalted conception of the saving of time,
labour, and expense thus effected.

The guardian of the chisel having in a few minutes cut the requisite
half dozen or so of holes, guided the plank on rollers towards a
pile, where it was laid, to be afterwards carried off to the
carriage-builders, who would fit it as one side of a carriage-frame to
its appropriate fellow-planks, which had all been prepared in the same
way.

Not far from this machine the visitors were shown another, in which
several circular saws of smaller dimensions than the first were at work
in concert, and laid at different angles to each other, so that when a
plank was given into their clutches it received cuts and slices in
certain parts during its passage through the machine, and came out much
modified and improved in form--all that the attendants had to do merely
being to fit the planks in their places and guide them safely through
the ordeal. Elsewhere Mrs Marrot and Bob beheld a frame--full of
gigantic saws cut a large log into half a dozen planks, all in one
sweep, in a few minutes--work which would have drawn the sweat from the
brows of two saw-pit men for several hours. One thing that attracted
the attention of Bob very strongly was the simple process of
hole-boring. Of course, in forming the massive frames of railway
carriages, it becomes