ed in London, there being a certain style and|—of washing and immersing the material in a workmanship there which the provinces are un- compound of acids and alkalies, in the propor able to achieve. tions of which the mystery is contained. It is It is a practice of the work-people to purchase afterwards fumigated with sulphur in a confined material on their own account, and, making it box or chamber, and when dry, becomes fit up into manufactured goods of the commonest to pass into the hands of the sewers. This description, to dispose of these to the large last is a critical period in the manufacture of the houses. This gives rise, when the market is bonnet: it may become a chef-d'œuvre, or a dowoverstocked, and the goods sell for what they will dy, under the manipulations of its feminine archfetch, to great distress and discontent; and it is itect. injurious not only to the work-people, but the Let us view the workroom of a large establishemployers, by its bringing into the market ment. Asmodeus-like, peeping through the skya vast quantity of low-priced and inferior goods. light, we behold from fifty to a hundred women Formerly every bonnet shop used to manufac- contained in an apartment well warmed, well ture its own goods; but since the introduction of lighted, well ventilated. On tables placed before large wholesale warehouses, scarcely one of them, they have wooden or plaster blocks of vathem now does so. Even when a lady orders arious shapes according to the reigning mode, on bonnet to be made at a favorite shop, that bon- which they form the bonnet. This done, the net is usually procured from some wholesale- bonnet must be stiffened, which is effected with dealer, who, having a greater command of mate- fine white gelatine, put on the surface with a rial and inventive talent, can make goods both brush; and when dry, it is fit for the next operbetter and cheaper than the show-shops. There ation, which is blocking. This last is performis a marked difference in the appearance of these ed chiefly by male assistants, as it requires emporiums of fashion, now, to what they pre- strength and endurance, unfitted for female hands sented fifteen or twenty years ago: bonnets were-the "fancys" excepted, which being lighter then generally exposed in the windows untrim-work, and requiring greater skill and taste, is med; now, the millinery trade being combined mostly intrusted to women. with the retail-straw, the attractions of a bonnet are considerably enhanced. After the purchase of varieties of plait by the wholesale dealers, commences the process of bleaching the straw, which is an art confined to a few. It consists-so far as we are at liberty to explain what is of course, an important secret Blocking means pressing the bonnet, It is effected with a box-iron, wet muslin cloths being constantly placed on the straw during the operation. Some years ago, machines were used for this process; but the shapes being now more complicated, there remain scarcely any of them in use. The bonnet is now wired, and it is finished. A PEASANT Swayed by a covetous mind, being] "While" and "wile."—An error in our orthocommunicated on Easter-Day, received the Host graphy has lately become widely prevalent, and in his mouth, and afterwards laid it among his it is to be feared that, unless some timely check Bees, believing that all the Bees of the Neighbor- be put upon it, it will firmly establish itself in hood would come thither to work their wax and our language. The expression I allude to is to honey. This covetous, impious wretch was not" while away the time;" which ought to be writwholly disappointed of his hopes; for all his ten "wile away the time." The difference beneighbors' Bees came indeed to his hives, but tween the two words need not detain us long. not to make honey, but to render there the hon- While is a noun, signifying " time," and nothing ors due to the Creator. The issue of their arrival else: and so we have it in the expressions, “a was that they melodiously sang to Him songs of long while," "it is not worth my while." Wile, praise as they were able; after they had built a on the contrary, is both noun and verb: as a little Church with their wax from the founda- noun it means "guile," and as a verb it means tions to the roof, divided into three rooms, sus-" to beguile; " being, in fact, only another form tained by pillars, with their bases and chapiters. of the word guile, as William is of Guillaume, They had there also an Altar, upon which they had warden of guardian. The result of the whole is, laid the precious body of our Lord, and flew that to "wile away the time" signifies, to beguile round about it, continuing their music. The the time: to "while away the time" means nopeasant coming nigh that hive where he thing, but is sheer nonsense. had put the H. Sacrament, the Bees issued out furiously by troops, and surrounding him on all sides, revenged the irreverence done to their P.S-I may remark that the word while, used Creator, and stung him so severely that they left as a conjunction, has the same signification, that him in sad case. This punishment made this of time: thus, "I was at Dover while you were miserable wretch come to himself, who, acknowl-at Margate," is equivalent to "I was at Dover edging his error, went to find out the parish during the time during which you were at Marpriest to confess his fault to him.... etc.-Notes gate."-Notes and Queries. ... and Queries. X. Y. Z. From Household Words. PASSING FACES. quaintances?-tall men, with sloping shoulders and slender legs, with long necks, which no cravat or stock can cover, with small We have no need to go abroad to study heads;-if a crane, the hair cropped short; if ethnology. A walk through the streets of a secretary-bird, worn long an flung back on London will show us specimens of every hu- to the shoulders, that look as if they were slidman variety known. Not pur sang, of course, ing down-hill in a fright. These are the men but transmitted (diluted too) through the who are called elegant-good lord!—and who Anglo-Saxon medium,-special characteristics maunder through life in a daft state of simnecessarily not left very sharply defined. It pering dilettanteism, but who never thought a takes a tolerably quick eye, and the educated man's thought, nor did a man's work, since perceptions of an artist, to trace the original they were born. Every one knows, too, the lines through the successive shadings made by hawk's face-about gambling-tables and down many generations of a different race. But in the City very common-and the rook's and still those lines are to be seen by all who the jackdaw's; and some of us are troubled know how to look for them, or who under- with the distressing neighborhood of a foolish stand them when they are before them. The man-snipe, and some of us have had our intibroad distinctions of Saxon, Celt, and Nor-mate owls and favorite parrots; though the man, are easily recognized. And, of course, man-parrot is not a desirable companion in we know negroes when we see them, and general. can give a tolerably shrewd guess at a Lascar But the beast-faces, there is no limit to or a Chinaman. But, few people dream of them! Dogs alone supply the outlines of half tracing out the Jewish ancestor in that Chris- the portraits we know. There is the bull-dog, tianized descendant of three or four genera--that man in the brown suit yonder, with tions, through the Hebrew sign is distinctly bandy legs and heavy shoulders, did you marked in the very midst of blue eyes, fair skin, ever see a kenneled muzzle more thoroughly and flaxen hair. People seldom judge of the bull-dog than this? The small eyes close races excepting by color. The form and under the brows, the smooth bullet forehead, the features go for nothing. Who assigns the heavy jaw, and snub nose, all are essentially turned lip, the yellow-white eye, the flat fore- of the bull-dog breed, and at the same time head, the spreading nostril, the square chest, the essentially British. Then the mastiff, with tow-like hair, the long heel, back to their res- the double-bass voice and the square hanging pective races? Who spies the Red Indian, or jaw; and the shabby-looking turnspit, with the Malay, or the Nubian, or the Fin, hidden, his hair staring out at all sides, and his eyes like the yellow dwarf, in the lower branches of a drawn up to its roots; and the greyhound, respectable English gentleman's genealogical lean of rib and sharp of face; and the terrier tree? Who detects the Tartar in his West-End-who is often a lawyer-with a snarl in his friend, unless it be that metaphorical Tartar voice and a kind of restlessness in his eye, as which a man sometimes catches in his wife? if mentally worrying a rat-his client; and And who can swear to the Slavonian, with an English name, who speaks perfect Saxon, and wears a Nicoll's paletot? Yet we are always encountering diluted specimens of these and other races, who perhaps don't know as much of their own ancestry as we can read to them from nature's evidence, printed in an unmistakable type on their own faces. the Skye, all beard and moustache and glossy curls, with a plaintive expression of countenance and an exceedingly meek demeanor ; and the noble old Newfoundland dog, perhaps a brave old soldier from active service, who is chivalrous to women and gentle to children, and who repels petty annoyances with a grand patience that is veritably heroic. Reader, if you know a Newfoundland-dog man, It is perfectly incredible what a large num- cherish him, stupid as he probably will be, yet ber of ugly people one sees. One wonders he is worth your love. Then we have horsewhere they can possibly have come from,-faced men; and men like camels, with quite from what invading tribe of savages or mon- the camel lip; and the sheep-faced man, with keys. We meet faces that are scarcely human, the forehead retreating from his long energe-positively brutified out of all trace of intel- tic nose,-smooth men without whiskers, and ligence by vice, gin, and want of education; with shining hair cut close, and not curling, but besides this sad class, there are the simply like pointers; the lion-man, he is a grand felugly faces, with all the lines turned the low; and the bull-headed man; the flat serwrong way, and all the colors in the wrong pent head; and the tiger's, like an inverted places; and then there are the bird and beast pyramid; the giraffe's lengthly unhelpfulness; faces, of which Gavarni's caricatures are faith- and the sharp red face of the fox. Don't we ful portraits. Doesn't everybody count a meet men like these at every step we take in crane and a secretary-bird among his ac-London ?-and if we know any such intimate ly, don't we invariably find that their char- women like kangaroos, with short arms and a acters correspond somewhat with their per- clumsy kind of hop when they walk; and we have active, intelligent little women, with just sons? figure, sitting with her hands on her two knees, and grinning grimly on the Museum world, as Bubastis, the lion-headed goddess of the Nile. The women, too-we have likenesses for the faintest suspicion of a rat's face on them them. I know a woman who might have as they look watchfully after the servants and been the ancestress of all the rabbits in all inspect the mysteries of the jam closet. Then the hutches in England. A soft downy- there are pretty little loving marmoset faces looking, fair, placid woman, with long hair I know the very transcript of that goldenlooping down, like ears, and an innocent face haired Silky Tamarin in the Zoological Gar of mingled timidity and surprise. She is a dens. It is a gentle, plaintive, loving creasweet-tempered thing, always eating or sleep-ture, with large liquid brown eyes, that have ing; who breathes hard when she goes up- always a tear behind them and a look of soft stairs, and who has as few brains in working reproach in them; its hair hangs in a profuorder as a human being can get on with. sion of golden-brown curls-not curls so much She is just a human rabbit, and nothing as a mass of waving tresses; it is a creeping, more; and she looks like one. We all know nestling, clinging thing, that seems as if it the setter woman-the best of all the types- wants always to bury itself in some one's arms graceful, animated, well-formed, intelligent, -as if the world outside were all too large and with large eyes and wavy hair, who walks cold for it. There is the horsefaced woman, with a firm tread but a light one, and who too, as well as the horsefaced man; and there can turn her hand to anything. The true is the turnspit woman, with her ragged head setter woman is always married; she is the and blunt common nose. In fact, there are real woman of the world. Then there is the female varieties of all the male types we Blenheim spaniel, who covers up her face in have mentioned, excepting, perhaps, the lion her ringlets and holds down her head when woman. I have never seen a true lion-headshe talks, and who is shy and timid. And ed woman, excepting in that black Egyptian there is the greyhound woman, with lanternjaws and braided hair, and large knuckles, generally rather distorted. There is the cat woman, too; elegant, stealthy, clever, cares- Well, then, as we walk through London, sing; who walks without noise and is great in we have two subjects of contemplation in the the way of endearment. No limbs are so sup- passing faces hurrying by-their races and ple as hers, no backbone so wonderfully pli- their likenesses. Now to their social condition ant; no voice so sweet, no manners so endear- and their histories, stamped on them as legibly ing. She extracts your secrets from you be- as arms are painted on a carriage-panel. fore you know that you have spoken; and In the city alone are several varieties of half-an-hour's conversation with that graceful, our modern Englishman. There are the purring woman, has revealed to her every smart men, who wear jaunty hats and wellmost dangerous fact it has been your life's trimmed moustaches; who drive to their study to hide. The cat woman is a danger- places of business in cabs with tigers, and ous animal. She has claws hidden in that who evidently think they are paying comvelvet paw, and she can draw blood when merce a compliment by making their forshe unsheathes them. Then there is the cow-tunes out of it. And there are the staid faced woman, generally of phlegmatic temper- respectable city men, who live in the suburbs, ament and melancholy disposition, given to ride in omnibuses, and wear great coats of pious books and teetotalism. And there is superseded cut; who carry umbrellas, shaven the lurcher woman, the strong-visaged, strong-chins, and national whiskers, and are emphatiminded female, who wears rough coats with cally the city men. And there are equivocalmen's pockets and large bone buttons, and looking men, who are evidently unsubstantial whose bonnets fling a spiteful defiance at speculators without capital, and who trade on both beauty and fashion. This is that won-airy thousands when they want money enough derful creature who electrifies foreigners by to buy a dinner. Don't we all know these climbing their mountains in a mongrel-kind men, with their keen faces and bad hats, of attire, in which men's cloth trowsers form their eager walk and trowsers bulged out at the most striking feature; and who goes about the knees? Don't we all know the very the business of life in a rough, gruff, lurcher- turn of their black satin handkerchief pinned like fashion, as if grace and beauty were the with that paste pin-a claw holding a pearltwo cardinal sins of womanhood and she were all sham, every bit of it, excepting the claw, on a "mission" to put them down. This is which is allegorical-and folded so as to hide not a desirable animal. We have women like the soiled and crumpled shirt? Don't we see merino sheep: they wear their hair over their by their very boots that they are men of eyes and far on to their necks. And women like straw? For, by right of unpaid bills, the poodle dogs, with fuzzy heads and round eyes; | landlady is impertinent or the servant disre spectful, and these necessary coverings are and thinking Henry the most charming brotherefore left in a dusty and unenlightened ther possible. And condition. These are the men who are the You meet the strong-minded woman always, curse of the commercial world. Unscrupu- and always recognizable under her various lous, shifty, careless of the ruin which their disguises-the lurcher still and ever. false schemes may bring on their dupes when you meet the silly little woman whose bonnets the bubble bursts and the day of reckoning are farther off her head, whose petticoats are comes. In the city, too, about the doors of longer-especially in dirty weather-and the banks and offices and the city clubs, are whose cloaks are shorter, than everybody's standing old men dirty and worn. Perhaps else; orange girls with bloated faces, flattenthey were once clerks in the very offices at ed bonnets, and torn shawls; butter boys the doors of which they now lounge to serve with greasy jackets; butcher boys with greasy any cab or carriage that may drive up. You hair; newspaper boys, impudent and vocal; never see such men anywhere but in the city; ragged school boys, in red jackets or green, not with the same amount of intelligence and cleaning your honor's shoes for a penny, and abject poverty combined. In better days with a strange expression of hope and rethay may perhaps have shovelled you out gold demption in their faces; tigers, pages—all in shining scoop or have checked your cash-buttons and silver lace, poor monkeys, vulgar book for thousands. boys, coming from school; charity schoolboys, Then there are Jews; with that clever, dressed out of all reason; foreigners with sensual, crafty countenance, which contains beards, hooded cloaks, slouched hats, and the epitome of the whole Hebrew history; smoking; artists imitating them-very badly; with their jewellery and flashy dress. And shopmen, oily and pert; country clergymen there are young thieves, with downcast eyes up for the day, with a train of women the reand a wholesome fear of the policeman; but verse of fashionable; guardsmen ; soldiers lateevery now and then a sharp glance that ly in old-fashioned hunting-coats; footmen; seems to take in a whole world of purses and workmen, all lime and paint; pretty girls and pockets, and to subtract your money like lovely children; this is the London world as magic from your hand. These have generally seen in the London streets, and meet with an older lad, or young man, lounging near every day. them. You would scarcely believe him their And what a world it is, as it passes so companion, he looks so staid and respectable; swiftly by! The hopes, the joys, the deadly but he is. The young thieves are not con- fears; the triumph here, the ruin there; the fined to the city, unhappily. You see them quiet heroism, the secret sin-what a tumult everywhere. Turning vaguely down any of human passions burning like fire in the street where they think they see a victim; volcano of human life! Look at that pale walking without aim or purpose or business woman, with red eyes, sunken cheeks, and in their walk; dressed incongruously-with that painful thinness of the shabby genteel some one, or perhaps two articles of dress She is the wife of a gambler, once an honorperfectly good, and the rest in tatters; bear-able and wealthy man, now sunk to the lowest ing no signs of special trade or of work about depths of moral degradation-fast sinking to them; a strange kind of cunning, rather than the lowest depths of social poverty as well of intelligence, in their faces: these are the He came home last night, half mad. The marks of the thieves. broad bruise on her shoulders beneath that Turning westward, carriages and mous- flimsy shawl would tell its own tale, if you taches increase; queerly dressed people and saw it. Her husband's hand used once to fall carts decrease. You see fewer policemen, as in a softer fashion there than it fell last night. such; but more acute-looking men in plain She has come to-day to pawn some of her clothes, on the look out for evidence or a clothes; the first time in her miserable career criminal. And you see more ladies. Here is that this task has been forced on her: by this one in all the pride of her new maternity, day next year she will have known every walking with nurse by her side carrying baby pawnbroker's shop in the quarter. Lucky in a maze of ribbons, laces, and embroidery. for her, if she does not come to know every Sometimes it is a blue baby, sometimes a pink ginshop as well! This little woman, laughing one, or a light green or a stone color: not in the shrill voice, ran away from her home often a white one, in London, because of the a year ago. She is laughing now to choke soot. You read in the face of this young wife back the tears which gushed to her strained pleasant revelations of love and hapiness, with eyes as the baby in the white long cloak was all the gloss of newness on the marriage ring carried by. She left one about the same age, as yet. You read of a pretty home, with the on the hot summer's night when she fled clean bright furniture arranged like pretty from all that good men reverence. Those playthings, and re-arranged almost daily; of tears show that conscience is not all dead sisters coming to stay, full of pride and love, within her yet. Poor mother! the day will come when that false laughter will no longer though still not so much as is wanted. The choke back those penitent sobs: when you sweet-looking girl walking alone, and dressed will forget to smile, and learn to weep and all in dove-color, is an authoress; and the pray! The downcast man stalking moodily man with bright eyes and black hair, who has along has just lost his last farthing on the just lifted his hat to her and walks on, with a Stock Exchange. He is going home now certain slouch in his shoulders that belongs to to break the news to his wife, and to ar- a man of business, is an author, and an editor; range for a flight across the Channel. He, a pope, a Jupiter, a czar in his own domain, this moment jostling him, was married last against whose fiat there is neither redress week to an heiress, and a pretty one too: he nor appeal. No despotism is equal to the is humming an opera tune as he walks briskly despotism of an editor. home to his temporary lodgings, and wonder- Past the Circus-up Regent Street, lining what people can find in life to make them gering to look at some of the beautiful things so miserable and dull! For his part, he finds set up in the windows-through Oxford this world a jolly place enough; and so might Street, and towards the Marble Archothers too, if they chose, he says. That pale crowds on crowds still meet; and face after youth sauntering feebly, dined out last night, face, full of meaning, turned towards you as and woke with a headache this morning. He you pass; signs of all nations and races of wears a glass in his eye, and is qualifying him- men pass you, unknown of all and to themself for manliness and-death, by a course of selves whence they came; beasts and birds dissipation. He has just come to his fortune, dressed in human form; tragedies in broadwhich he won't enjoy many years, unless he cloth, farces in rags; passions sweeping finds out that he is living the life of a fool through the air like tropical storms, and silent and he must grow wiser before he can find virtues stealing by like moonlight; LIFE, in out that. The clean respectable woman of all its boundless power of joy and sufferingmiddle age is a gentleman's housekeeper this is the great picture-book to be read in coming from her visits among the poor. She London streets; these are the wild notes to be has just taken some wine to a sick woman listened to; this the strange mass of pathos, down in a filthy street in Westminster, and poetry, caricature, and beauty which lie heapsome socks and flannel to a family of destitute ed up together without order or distinctive children. There is much more of this kind of heading, and which men endorse as Society charity than we see on the surface of society; and the World. From the Transcript. OF MYSELF. I live an odd and dreamy life; And I have friends, and they are quaint; I loved in youth-most people do : I know not why we never wed; I courted as most lovers do We walked in churchyards moonlit nights, She married. Then her husband died: Some mournful measures in my rhymes. And so my inner world rolled on, To chase the shadows of despair. My heart seems empty oftentimes: It once o'erflowed like flowers in June ;- God never made a worthless thing: The wind has meanings solemn, grand : And I will live in simple faith I live an odd and dreamy life; |