ls so badly mixed that it
may write blacker in one place than another, and is almost sure to
break. Good pencils bearing the name of a reliable firm are cheapest.

VII

THE DISHES ON OUR TABLES

If any one should give you a lump of clay and ask you to make a bowl,
how should you set about it? The first thing would be, of course, to
put it on a table so you could work on it with both hands. You would
make a depression at the top and push out the sides and smooth them as
best you could. It would result in a rough, uneven sort of bowl, and
before it was done, you would have made one discovery, namely, that if
the table only turned around in front of you, you could see all sides
of the bowl from the same position, and it would be easier to make it
regular. This is just what the potter's wheel does. It is really two
horizontal wheels. The upper one is a disk a foot or two in diameter.
This is connected by a shaft with the lower one, which is much larger.
When the potter was at work at a wheel of this sort, he stood on one
foot and turned the lower wheel with the other, thus setting the upper
wheel in motion. This was called a "kick-wheel." As wheels are made
now, the potter sits at his work and turns the wheel by means of a
treadle.

Almost any kind of clay will make a dish, but no one kind will make
it so well that the addition of some other kind would not improve it.
Whatever clays are chosen, they must be prepared with great care to
make sure that not one grain in them is coarser than any other.
Sometimes one will slip through, and you can see on the finished dish
what a bad-looking place it makes. Even for the coarsest earthenware,
such as flower-pots, the moist clay is forced down a cylinder and
through a wire sieve; and for stoneware and porcelain it has to go
through several processes. When flint and feldspar are used, they are
ground fine at the quarry. On reaching the factory, they are mixed
with the proper quantities of other clays--but in just what proportions
is one of the secrets of the trade. Then they go into "plungers" or
"blungers," great round tanks with arms extending from a shaft in the
center. The shaft revolves and the arms beat the clay till all the sand
and pebbles have settled on the bottom, and the fine clay grains are
floating in the water above them. These pass into canvas bags. The
water is forced out through the canvas, and on every bag there is left
a thin sheet of moist clay. If t