uses, where they sieved it. Next
they weighed it and put it into bins. It looked like fine, dark flour.

[Illustration: THE POTTER'S WHEEL.]

A little piece off from the bins there was a big deep box. They were
mixing clay and water in it, and making a paste. It looked like lime when
they're making mortar. The box leaked awfully, and white paste was
running down on the floor.

At the end of the box they had a pump working, and it was pumping the
paste into what they called a _press_. It was too funny for anything. I
couldn't more than half understand it. But it looks something like a
baby-crib, only it has slats across the top, and they're close together.
They have a lot of bags inbetween the slats, and the clay gets into the
bags and gets pressed flat, so that most of the water is squeezed out.
When they take it out of the bags it looks something like a sheet of
shortcake before it's cut or baked. Then they roll a lot of them
together, and that's what they make dishes out of. They call it
_biscuit_.

The man took us down into the cellar under the little room to show us the
engine that made the paste and pumped and pressed the clay. I was afraid,
and didn't want to go down, but papa said it was only a little one. It
was nice and clean down there, with a neat brick floor, but awful hot. I
was glad to come up.

[Illustration: THE KILN AND SAGGERS.]

After the little room there's one big room where they don't do much of
anything. It is like a large shed, for it is dark and has no floor. The
dressing-room where we were first is on one side, and the dark room where
the big chimneys are, is back of it. We went through it, and over to one
side and up the stairs to the second story.

It's nice up there. It's one great big room, five times as big as our
Sunday School room, with ever so many windows. All around the sides and
down the middle, and cross-ways, and out in the wings are shelves, piled
full of brand-new dishes. And there are tables all along the walls, and
that's where they make them. I could stand and look all day.

I saw two boys throwing up a great big lump of clay and catching it; then
cutting it with a string and putting the pieces together again, then
throwing it up again, until it made me dizzy to look at them. I asked the
man what they were doing, and he said, _wedging the clay_. That means
taking the air out. They keep on doing that until there are no
air-bubbles in it.

We stopped and talked to a m