The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids Read online

  wrapped personage passed, making for the fac-

  tory door, and spying him coming, the girl rapid-

  ly closed the other one.

  "Is there no horse-shed here, Sir?"

  "Yonder, to the wood-shed," he replied, and

  disappeared inside the factory.

  With much ado I managed to wedge in horse

  and pung between the scattered piles of wood

  all sawn and split. Then, blanketing my horse,

  and piling my buffalo on the blanket's top, and

  tucking in its edges well around the breast-band

  and breeching, so that the wind might not strip

  him bare, I tied him fast, and ran lamely for the

  factory door, stiff with frost, and cumbered with

  my driver's dread-naught.

  Immediately I found myself standing in a

  spacious, intolerably lighted by long rows

  of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene

  without.

  At rows of blank-looking counters sat rows

  of blank-looking girls, with blank, white folders

  in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank

  paper.

  In one corner stood some huge frame of

  ponderous iron, with a vertical thing like a pis-

  ton periodically rising and falling upon a heavy

  wooden block. Before it -- its tame minister --

  stood a tall girl, feeding the iron animal with

  half-quires of rose-hued note paper, which, at

  every downward dab of the piston-like machine,

  received in the corner the impress of a wreath

  of roses. I looked from the rosy paper to the

  pallid cheek, but said nothing.

  Seated before a long apparatus, strung with

  long, slender strings like any harp, another girl

  was feeding it with foolscap sheets, which, so

  soon as they curiously traveled from her on the

  cords, were withdrawn at the opposite end of

  the machine by a second girl. They came to

  the first girl blank; they went to the second

  girl ruled.

  I looked upon the first girl's brow, and saw it

  was young and fair; I looked upon the second

  girl's brow, and saw it was ruled and wrinkled.

  Then, as I still looked, the two -- for some small

  variety to the monotony -- changed places; and

  where had stood the young, fair brow, now stood

  the ruled and wrinkled one.

  Perched high upon a narrow platform, and

  still higher upon a high stool crowning it, sat

  another figure serving some other iron animal;

  while below the platform sat her mate in some

  sort of reciprocal attendance.

  Not a syllable was breathed. Nothing was

  heard but the low, steady, overruling hum of

  the iron animals. The human voice was ban-

  ished from the spot. Machinery -- that vaunted

  slave of humanity -- here stood menially served

  by human beings, who served mutely and cring-

  ingly as the slave serves the Sultan. The girls

  did not so much seem accessory wheels to the

  general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.

  All this scene around me was instantaneously

  taken in at one sweeping glance -- even before I

  had proceeded to unwind the heavy fur tippet

  from around my neck. But as soon as this fell

  from me the dark-complexioned man, standing

  close by, raised a sudden cry, and seizing my

  arm, dragged me out into the open air, and

  without pausing for word instantly caught up

  some congealed snow and began rubbing both

  my cheeks.

  "Two white spots like the whites of your

  eyes," he said; "man, your cheeks are frozen."

  "That may well be," muttered I; "'tis some

  wonder the frost of the Devil's Dungeon strikes

  in no deeper. Rub away."

  Soon a horrible, tearing pain caught at my

  reviving cheeks. Two gaunt blood-hounds, one

  on each side, seemed mumbling them. I seemed

  Actæon.

  Presently, when all was over, I re-entered

  the factory, made known my business, con-

  cluded it satisfactorily, and then begged to be

  conducted throughout the place to view it.

  "Cupid is the boy for that," said the dark-

  complexioned man. "Cupid!" and by this

  odd fancy-name calling a dimpled, red-cheeked,

  spirited-looking, forward little fellow, who was

  rather impudently, I thought, gliding about

  among the passive-looking girls -- like a gold

  fish through hueless waves -- yet doing nothing

  in particular that I could see, the man bade

  him lead the stranger through the edifice.

  "Come first and see the water-wheel," said

  this lively lad, with the air of boyishly-brisk

  importance.

  Quitting the folding-room, we crossed some

  damp, cold boards, and stood beneath a area

  wet shed, incessantly showering with foam, like

  the green barnacled bow of some East India-

  man in a gale. Round and round here went the

  enormous revolutions of the dark colossal water-

  wheel, grim with its one immutable purpose.

  "This sets our whole machinery a-going, Sir

  in every part of all these buildings; where the

  girls work and all."

  I looked, and saw that the turbid waters of

  Blood River had not changed their hue by com-

  ing under the use of man.

  "You make only blank paper; no printing

  of any sort, I suppose? All blank paper, don't

  you?"

  "Certainly; what else should a paper-factory

  make?"

  The lad here looked at me as if suspicious

  of my common-sense.

  "Oh, to be sure!" said I, confused and stam-

  mering; "it only struck me as so strange that

  red waters should turn out pale chee -- paper, I

  mean."

  He took me up a wet and rickety stair to a

  great light room, furnished with no visible thing

  but rude, manger-like receptacles running all

  round its sides; and up to these mangers, like

  so many mares haltered to the rack, stood rows

  of girls. Before each was vertically thrust up

  a long, glittering scythe, immovably fixed at

  bottom to the manger-edge. The curve of the

  scythe, and its having no snath to it, made it

  look exactly like a sword. To and fro, across

  the sharp edge, the girls forever dragged long

  strips of rags, washed white, picked from baskets

  at one side; thus ripping asunder every seam,

  and converting the tatters almost into lint. The

  air swam with the fine, poisonous particles, which

  from all sides darted, subtilely, as motes in sun-

  beams, into the lungs.

  "This is the rag-room," coughed the boy.

  "You find it rather stifling here," coughed I,

  in answer; " but the girls don't cough."

  "Oh, they are used to it."

  "Where do you get such hosts of rags?" pick-

  ing up a handful from a basket.

  "Some from the country round about; some

  from far over sea -- Leghorn and London."

  "'Tis not unlikely, then," murmured I, "that

  among these heaps of rags there may be some


  old shirts, gathered from the dormitories of the

  Paradise of Bachelors. But the buttons are all

  dropped off. Pray, my lad, do you ever find

  any bachelor's buttons hereabouts?"

  "None grow in this part of the country. The

  Devil's Dungeon is no place for flowers."

  "Oh! you mean the flowers so called -- the

  Bachelor's Buttons?"

  "And was not that what you asked about?

  Or did you mean the gold bosom-buttons of our

  boss, Old Bach, as our whispering girls all call

  him?"

  "The man, then, I saw below is a bachelor,

  is he?"

  "Oh, yes, he's a Bach."

  "The edges of those swords, they are turned

  outward from the girls, if I see right; but their

  rags and fingers fly so, I can not distinctly see."

  "Turned outward."

  Yes, murmured I to myself; I see it now;

  turned outward, and each erected sword is

  so borne, edge-outward, before each girl. If

  my reading fails me not, just so, of old, con-

  demned state-prisoners went from the hall of

  judgment to their doom: an officer before, bear-

  ing a sword, its edge turned outward, in signif-

  icance of their fatal sentence. So, through con-

  sumptive pallors of this blank, raggy life, go

  these white girls to death.

  "Those scythes look very sharp," again turn-

  ing toward the boy.

  "Yes; they have to keep them so. Look!"

  That moment two of the girls, dropping their

  rags, plied each a whet-stone up and down the

  sword-blade. My unaccustomed blood curdled

  at the sharp shriek of the tormented steel.

  Their own executioners; themselves whetting

  the very swords that slay them; meditated I.

  "What makes those girls so sheet-white, my lad?"

  "Why" -- with a roguish twinkle, pure igno-

  rant drollery, not knowing heartlessness -- "I

  suppose the handling of such white bits of sheets

  all the time makes them so sheety."

  "Let us leave the rag-room now, my lad."

  More tragical and more inscrutably mysteri-

  ous than any mystic sight, human or machine,

  throughout the factory, was the strange inno-

  cence of cruel-heartedness in this usage-hard-

  ened boy.

  "And now," said he, cheerily, "I suppose

  you want to see our great machine, which cost

  us twelve thousand dollars only last autumn.

  That's the machine that makes the paper, too.

  This way, Sir."

  Following him, I crossed a large, bespattered

  place, with two great round vats in it, full of a

  white, wet, woolly-looking stuff, not unlike the

  albuminous part of an egg, soft-boiled.

  "There," said Cupid, tapping the vats care-

  lessly, "these are the first beginnings of the

  paper; this white pulp you see. Look how it

  swims bubbling round and round, moved by the

  paddle here. From hence it pours from both

  vats into that one common channel yonder; and

  so goes, mixed up and leisurely, to the great

  machine. And now for that."

  He led me into a room, stifling with a strange,

  blood-like, abdominal heat, as if here, true

  enough, were being finally developed the germ-

  inous particles lately seen.

  Before me, rolled out like some long East-

  ern manuscript, lay stretched one continuous

  length of iron frame-work -- multitudinous and

  mystical, with all sorts of rollers, wheels, and

  cylinders, in slowly-measured and unceasing

  motion.

  "Here first comes the pulp now," said Cupid,

  pointing to the nighest end of the machine.

  "See; first it pours out and spreads itself upon

  this wide, sloping board; and then -- look --

  slides, thin and quivering, beneath the first

  roller there. Follow on now, and see it as it

  slides from under that to the next cylinder.

  There; see how it has become just a very little

  less pulpy now. One step more, and it grows

  still more to some slight consistence. Still an-

  other cylinder, and it is so knitted -- though as

  yet mere dragon-fly wing -- that it forms an air-

  bridge here, like a suspended cobweb, between

  two more separated rollers; and flowing over

  the last one, and under again, and doubling

  about there out of sight for a minute among all

  those mixed cylinders you indistinctly see, it

  reappears here, looking now at last a little less

  like pulp and more like paper, but still quite

  delicate and defective yet awhile. But -- a lit-

  tle further onward, Sir, if you please -- here

  now, at this further point, it puts on something

  of a real look, as if it might turn out to be some-

  thing you might possibly handle in the end.

  But it's not yet done, Sir. Good way to travel

  yet, and plenty more of cylinders must roll it."

  "Bless my soul!" said I, amazed at the elon-

  gation, interminable convolutions, and deliber-

  ate slowness of the machine; "it must take a

  long time for the pulp to pass from end to end,

  and come out paper."

  "Oh! not so long," smiled the precocious

  lad, with a superior and patronizing air; "only

  nine minutes. But look; you may try it for

  yourself. Have you a bit of paper? Ah! here's

  a bit on the floor. Now mark that with any

  word you please, and let me dab it on here, and

  we'll see how long before it comes out at the

  other end."

  "Well, let me see," said I, taking out my

  pencil; "come, I'll mark it with your name."

  Bidding me take out my watch, Cupid adroit-

  ly dropped the inscribed slip on an exposed part

  of the incipient mass.

  Instantly my eye marked the second-hand on

  my dial-plate.

  Slowly I followed the slip, inch by inch;

  sometimes pausing for full half a minute as it

  disappeared beneath inscrutable groups of the

  lower cylinders, but only gradually to emerge

  again; and so, on, and on, and on -- inch by

  inch; now in open sight, sliding along like a

  freckle on the quivering sheet, and then again

  wholly vanished; and so, on, and on, and on --

  inch by inch; all the time the main sheet grow-

  ing more and more to final firmness -- when, sud-

  denly, I saw a sort of paper-fall, not wholly un-

  like a water-fall; a scissory sound smote my

  ear, as of some cord being snapped, and down

  dropped an unfolded sheet of perfect foolscap,

  with my "Cupid" half faded out of it, and still

  moist and warm.

  My travels were at an end, for here was the

  end of the machine.

  "Well, how long was it ?" said Cupid.

  "Nine minutes to a second," replied I, watch

  in hand.

  "I told you so."

  For a moment a curious emotion filled me,

  not wholly unlike that which one might experi-

  ence at the fulfillment of some mysterious proph-

  ecy. But how absurd, thought I again; t
he

  thing is a mere machine, the essence of which

  is unvarying punctuality and precision.

  Previously absorbed by the wheels and cylin-

  ders, my attention was now directed to a sad-

  looking woman standing by.

  "That is rather an elderly person so silently

  tending the machine-end here. She would not

  seem wholly used to it either."

  "Oh," knowingly whispered Cupid, through

  the din, "she only came last week. She was a

  nurse formerly. But the business is poor in

  these parts, and she's left it. But look at the

  paper she is piling there."

  "Ay, foolscap," handling the piles of moist,

  warm sheets, which continually were being de-

  livered into the woman's waiting hands. "Don't

  you turn out any thing but foolscap at this ma-

  chine?"

  "Oh, sometimes, but not often, we turn out

  finer work -- cream-laid and royal sheets, we

  call them. But foolscap being in chief demand,

  we turn out foolscap most."

  It was very curious. Looking at that blank

  paper continually dropping, dropping, dropping,

  my mind ran on in wonderings of those strange

  uses to which those thousand sheets eventually

  would be put. All sorts of writings would be

  writ on those now vacant things -- sermons, law-

  yers' briefs, physicians' prescriptions, love-let-

  ters, marriage certificates, bills of divorce, regis-

  ters of births, death-warrants, and so on, without

  end. Then, recurring back to them as they here

  lay all blank, I could not but bethink me of that

  celebrated comparison of John Locke, who, in

  demonstration of his theory that man had no

  innate ideas, compared the human mind at birth

  to a sheet of blank paper; something destined

  to be scribbled on, but what sort of characters

  no soul might tell.

  Pacing slowly to and fro along the involved

  machine, still humming with its play, I was

  struck as well by the inevitability as the evolve-

  ment-power in all its motions.

  "Does that thin cobweb there," said I, point-

  ing to the sheet in its more imperfect stage,

  "does that never tear or break? It is marvel-

  ous fragile, and yet this machine it passes

  through is so mighty."

  "It never is known to tear a hair's point."

  "Does it never stop -- get clogged?"

  "No. It must go. The machinery makes it

  go just so; just that very way, and at that very

  pace you there plainly see it go. The pulp

  can't help going."

  Something of awe now stole over me, as I

  gazed upon this inflexible iron animal. Al-