e comparative merits and meanings of those mysterious
letters on our sickles, B.Y and I.R! What were they? Were they
beginnings of words, or whole words themselves? Did they stand for
things, qualities, or persons? "Mine is a _By_ sickle; mine is an
_Ir_ one. Mine is the best," says the last, "for it has the finest
teeth and the best curve." That was our boys' talk in walking
through the rye, with bent backs and red faces, a little behind our
fathers; who cut a wider work to enable us to keep near them.

In what blacksmith shop or hardware house in America does not
Sheffield show its face and faculties? Did any American, knowing
the difference between cast-iron and cast-steel, ever miss the sight
of Naylor and Sanderson's yellow labels in his travels? How many
millions of acres of primeval forest have the ages edged with their
fine steel cut through, and given to the plough! Fashion has its
Iron Age as well as its Golden; and, what is more remarkable, the
first of the two has come last, in the fitful histories of custom.
And this last freak of feminine taste has brought a wonderful grist
of additional business to the Sheffield mill. The fair Eugenie has
done a good thing for this smoky town, well deserving of a monument
of burnished steel erected to her memory on one of these hills.
More than this; as Empress of Crinoline, she should wear the iron
crown of Charlemagne in her own right. Her husband's empire is but
a mere arondissement compared with the domain that does homage to
her sceptre. Sheffield is the great arsenal of her armaments.
Sheffield cases ships of war with iron plates a foot thick; but that
is nothing, in pounds avoirdupois, compared with the weight of steel
it spins into elastic springs for casing the skirts of two hundred
millions of the fair Eugenie's sex and lieges in the two
hemispheres. It is estimated that ten thousand tons of steel are
annually absorbed into this use in Christendom; and Sheffield,
doubtless, furnishes a large proportion of it.

Here I had another involuntary walk, not put down in the programme
of my expectations. On inquiring the way to Fir Vale, a picturesque
suburb where a friend resided, I was directed to a locality which,
it was suggested, must be the one I meant, though it was called Fir
View. I followed the direction given for a considerable distance,
when it was varied successively by persons of whom I occasionally
inquired. After ascending and descending