ransportation.

This process was called annealing, and the oven with a movable floor was
technically denominated a leer.

"Here they are pressing tumblers," continued the guide, pointing to a
press of smaller size and power, standing near another door of the same
furnace. "They have just had a large order from California, from a
single firm, for--how many tumblers did you tell me, Mr. Greaves?"

"Twenty-two thousand dozen, Sir; and we shall have to spring to get them
off at the time set."

"Nice tumblers they are, too,--just as good as cut, to my mind,"
continued Cicerone, poking with his stick at one of the batch that was
now being placed in the leer.

Very nice and clear they were, but not as good as cut to Miselle's mind,
and she remarked,--

"It is very easy to feel the difference, if not to see it, between cut
and pressed glass. The latter always has these blunted angles to the
facets, and has a certain vagueness and want of purpose about it; then
it is not so heavy or so sparkling; there is a certain exhilaration in
the gleam of cut glass that fits it for purposes to which the other
would be entirely unsuited. Fancy Champagne in a pressed goblet, or
tuberoses and japonicas in a pressed vase, or attar in a pressed
_flacon_!"

"Fortunately," replied Monsieur, to whom this aside had been addressed,
"the persons who consider Champagne, japonicas, and attar of roses
necessaries of life are very well able to provide cut-glass receptacles
for them. But isn't it worth one's while to be proud of a country where
every artisan's wife has her tumblers, her goblets, her vases, of
pressed glass, certainly, but 'as good, to her mind, as cut,' to quote
our friend? and don't you think it better that twenty-two thousand dozen
pressed tumblers should be sold at ten cents apiece than one-third that
number of cut ones at thirty cents, leaving all those who cannot pay the
higher price to drink out of"----

"Clam-shells? Well, perhaps. Equality and the rights of man are very
nice, of course, but I"----

"Like cut glass better," retorted Monsieur, laughing, while Miselle
turned a little indignantly to the guide, who was saying,--

"The reason the edges have that blunted look is partly because they
can't be struck as sharp as they can be ground, and then being heated in
the glory-holes, and again in the leers softens them down a little. In
fact, the very idea of annealing is to make the outside particles of the
glass run toge