and the smell was penetrating and peculiar.
There were cocklofts in all stages; full and
empty, half filled and half emptied; strong
active women were clambering about them
busily; and the whole thing had rather the
air of the upper part of the house of some
immensely rich old Turk, whose faithful
Seraglio were hiding his money because the
Sultan or the Pasha was coming.

As is the case with most pulps or
pigments so in the instance of this White
Lead, processes of stirring, separating,
washing, grinding, rolling, and pressing,
succeed. Some of these are unquestionably
inimical to health; the danger arising
from inhalation of particles of lead, or
from contact between the lead and the
touch, or both. Against these dangers, I
found good respirators provided (simply
made of flannel and muslin, so as to be
inexpensively renewed, and in some
instances washed with scented soap), and
gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns.
Everywhere, there was as much fresh air as
windows, well placed and opened, could
possibly admit. And it was explained,
that the precaution of frequently changing
the women employed in the worst parts
of the work (a precaution originating in
their own experience or apprehension of its
ill effects) was found salutary. They had
a mysterious and singular appearance with
the mouth and nose covered, and the loose
gown on, and yet bore out the simile of
the old Turk and the Seraglio all the better
for the disguise.

At last this vexed White Lead having
buried and resuscitated, and heated,
and cooled, and stirred, and separated, and
washed, and ground, and rolled, and pressed,
is subjected to the action of intense fiery heat.
A row of women, dressed as above described,
stood, let us say, in a large stone bake-house,
passing on the baking-dishes as they were
given out by the cooks, from hand to hand,
into the ovens. The oven or stove, cold as
yet, looked as high as an ordinary house, and
was full of men and women on temporary
footholds, briskly passing up and stowing
away the dishes. The door of another oven
or stove, about to be cooled and emptied,
was opened from above, for the Uncommercial
countenance to peer down into. The
Uncommercial countenance withdrew itself,
with expedition and a sense of suffocation
from the dull-glowing heat and the
overpowering smell. On the whole, perhaps
the going into these stoves to work, when
they are freshly opened, may be the worst
part of the occupation.

But I made it out to be indubitable
that the owners of these lead mills honestly
and sedulously try to reduce the dangers
of the occupation to the lowest point. A
washing-place is provided for the women
(I thought there might have been more
towels), and a room in which they hang
their clothes, and take their meals, and
where they have a good fire-range and fire,
and a female attendant to help them, and
to watch that they do not neglect the cleansing
of their hands before touching their
food. An experienced medical attendant is
provided for them, and any premonitory
symptoms of lead-poisoning are carefully
treated. Their tea-pots and such things
were set out on tables ready for their afternoon-
meal, when I saw their room, and it
had a homely look. It is found that they
bear the work much better than men; some
few of them have been at it for years, and
the great majority of those I observed were
strong and active. On the other hand it
should be remembered that most of them
are very capricious and irregular in their
attendance.

American inventiveness would seem to
indicate that before very long White Lead
may be made entirely by machinery. The
sooner, the better. In the mean time, I
parted from my two frank conductors over
the mills, by telling them that they had
nothing there to be concealed, and nothing
to be blamed for. As to the rest, the
philosophy of the matter of lead poisoning
and workpeople, seems to me to have been
pretty fairly summed up by the Irish-
woman, whom I quoted in my former
paper: "Some of them gits lead-pisoned
soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned
later, and some but not many niver, and
'tis all according to the constitooshun, Sur,
and some constitooshuns is strong and
some is weak."

Retracing my footsteps over my Beat, I
went off duty.

ANCIENT COLLEGE YOUTHS.

WHAT is an ancient college youth? Before
answering this question, it may be as well to
say what a college youth (in our present
acceptation of the term) is not.

A college youth is not, as might be supposed,
of necessity a member of any university; he
need belong to no boat club, practise for no
eleven, grind for no tripos. He wears no gown,
though caps are not unknown to him; but they
are the caps of every-day life, and not the
academical mortar-board, albeit he may not be
unfamiliar with the mortar-board of commerce.
He has not to trouble himself about classics;
mathematics, save in the rough and ready ways