em and returned the boxes. Mr.
James explained to his young companion that these slides emptied their
contents into great vats in the room below, where after lying some days
in a certain purifying solution they were boiled with soda to loosen the
dirt, thoroughly washed by machinery, and passed into great copper
kettles, where they were boiled to a pulp and ground at the same time,
horizontal grindstones reducing them to the finest powder. He also
showed her that the dust was rendered much less hurtful than it would
otherwise have been by a great fan kept constantly at work on one side
of the room, which drove it out of the windows in front of the girls,
who were thus not compelled to breathe it unless they turned directly
around facing the blast, as Katie had done on entering the room. He then
put her under the care of a pleasant-faced woman, whose duty it was to
oversee the little girls, saw that she had a comfortable seat, shook
hands with her, and went away.

Mr. James was by no means called upon to be so polite to a "new hand";
most employers would have told the child which way to go and then left
her to shift for herself, or at best have sent a man or boy to show her
the way. Perhaps he would have done so with some girls, but he saw that
the child was timid and homesick, and knew that a few kind words would
go a great way toward making her feel at home and happy, and would serve
as an offset against the disagreeable first impressions of the rag-room,
and the weariness of regular work undertaken for the first time.

Why should he care to have one of his factory girls "feel at home and
happy"? some one will say; his relations with them are only those of
business: so much work for so much money; it was nothing to him what
they thought or felt. Mr. James Mountjoy did not feel so. He thought
that his father and he were placed in this responsible position and
given the care of several hundred human souls expressly that some good
work might be done for them. He felt that human beings are more
precious than machinery, and that happiness is an important factor in
goodness. He looked upon his work-people as those for whom he must give
account, and tried to act in all his dealings with them "to the glory of
God." Had he been actuated by the purest selfishness and the most
approved business principles, he could not have chosen a wiser course;
for men and women treated as friends become almost of necessity
friendly, and seein