htubs, water-pails, and brushes. When he opened his
mysterious drawers and caverns, the sunshine flashed upon tin pans,
dippers, dustpans, and basins. Put away rather more choicely were
wooden-handled knives, two-tined forks, and dishes of glass and china;
and sometimes little tin cups painted red or blue and charmingly
gilded, or cooky-cutters in the shape of dogs and horses. All these
rare and delightful articles he was willing to exchange for rags. Is
it any wonder that the thrifty housewife saved her rags with the
utmost care, keeping one bag for white clippings and one for colored?

These peddlers were the great dependence of the paper mills, for the
finest paper is made from linen and cotton rags. When the rags reach
the factory, they are carefully sorted. All day long the sorters sit
before tables whose tops are covered with coarse wire screens, and
from masses of rags they pick out buttons, hooks and eyes, pins, bits
of rubber, and anything else that cannot possibly be made into paper.
At the same time they sort the rags carefully into different grades,
and with a knife shaped like a small sickle fastened upright to the
table they cut them into small pieces. Some of the dust falls through
the screen; but to remove the rest of it, the cut-up rags are tossed
about in a wire drum. Sometimes they are so dusty that when they come
out of the drum they weigh only nine tenths as much as when they go
in. The dust is out of them, but not the dirt. To remove that, they
are now put into great boilers full of steam; and here they cook and
turn over, and turn over and cook for hours. Lime and sometimes soda
are put with them to cleanse them and remove the coloring material;
but when they are poured out, they look anything but clean, for they
are of a particularly dirty brown; and the water that is drained away
from them looks even more uninteresting. Of course the next step is to
wash this dirty brown mass; and for at least four hours it is scrubbed
in a machine which beats it and rolls it and chops it and tumbles it
about until the wonder is that anything is left of it. All this while,
the water has been flowing through it, coming in clean and going out
dirty; and at length the mass becomes so light a gray that making
white paper of it does not seem quite hopeless. It is now bleached
with chloride of lime, and washed till it is of a creamy white color
and free from the lime, and then beaten again. If you fold a piece of
chea