to sell marriage contracts; and I can assure
persons about to marry, will provide an
excellent dinner for those prosaic visitors who
do not pretend to live upon love altogether.

I hear the railway bell.——

THE GREAT BRITISH GUM SECRET.

IN the course of inquiries, by which we
were enabled to draw up the article on Queen's
Heads (vol. iv., p. 510), we were shown, in the
"adhesive" department of Messrs. Perkins
and Company's establishment, several large
barrels filled with a fine powder, of a dark
straw colour. This powder is, we were told,
the basis of the adhesive paste with which
the backs of postage labels are coated.

"It is composed of——?" we asked,
helping the tip of the tongue with a taste
of it.

"That," said our cicerone, "was a secret."

We have since learnt the mighty secret.

In journeying from Dublin westward, by
the banks of the Liffey, we pass the village of
Chapelizod, and hamlet of Palmerstown. The
water power of the Liffey has attracted
manufacturers at different times, who, with
less or greater success, but, unfortunately,
with a general ill-success, have established
works there. Paper-making, starch-making,
cotton-spinning and weaving, bleaching and
printing of calicoes, have been attempted.
But all have been in turn abandoned, though
occasionally renewed by some new firm or
private adventurer. Into the supposed causes
of failure it is not here necessary to inquire.
The manufacture of starch has survived
several disasters.

The article British gum, which is now so
extensively used by calico-printers, by makers-up
of stationery, by the Government in
postage-stamp making, and in various industrial
arts, was first made at Chapelizod. Its origin
and history are somewhat curious.

The use of potatoes in the starch factories
excited the vehement opposition of the people,
whose chief article of food was thus consumed
and enhanced in price. These factories were
several times assailed by angry multitudes,
and on more than one occasion set on fire by
means never discovered. The fires were not
believed to have been always accidental.

On the fifth of September, 1821, George
the Fourth, on his return to England from
visiting Ireland, embarked at Dunleary
harbour, near Dublin. On that occasion the
ancient Irish name of Dunleary was blotted
out, and in honour of the royal visit that of
Kingston was substituted. In the evening
the citizens of Dublin sat late in taverns
and at supper parties. Loyalty and punch
abounded. In the midst of their revelry a
cry of "fire" was heard. They ran to the
streets, and some, following the glare and the
cries, found the fire at a starch manufactory
near Chapelizod. The stores not being of a
nature to burn rapidly, were in great part
saved from the fire, but they were so freely
deluged with water, that the starch was
washed away in streams ankle-deep over the
roadways and lanes into the Liffey.

Next morning, one of the journeymen
block-printers—whose employment was at the
Palmerstown print-works, but who lodged at
Chapelizod—woke with a parched throat and
headache. He asked himself where he had
been. He had been seeing the King away;
drinking, with thousands more, Dunleary out
of, and Kingston into, the map of Ireland.
Presently, his confused memory brought him
a vision of a fire: he had a thirsty sense of
having been carrying buckets of water; of
hearing the hissing of water on hot iron floors;
of the clanking of engines, and shouts of people
working the pumps; and of himself tumbling
about with the rest of the mob, and rolling
over one another in streams of liquefied
wreck, running from the burning starch
stores.

He would rise, dress, go out, inquire about
the fire, find his shopmates, and see if it was
to be a working day, or once again a drinking
day. He tried to dress; but—a—hoo!—his
clothes were gummed together. His coat
had no entrance for his arms until the sleeves
were picked open, bit by bit; what money
he had left was glued into his pockets; his
waistcoat was tightly buttoned up with—
what? Had he been bathing with his clothes
on, in a sea of gum-arabic—that costly article
used in the print-works?

This man was not the only one whose
clothes were saturated with gum. He and
four of his shopmates held a consultation, and
visited the wreck of the starch factory. In
the roadway, the starch, which, in a hot,
calcined state, had been watered by the fire-
engines the night before, was now found by
them lying in soft, gummy lumps. They, took
some of it home; they tested it in their trade;
they bought starch at a chandler's shop, put
it in a frying-pan, burned it to a lighter or
darker brown, added water, and at last
discovered themselves masters of an article,
which, if not gum itself, seemed as suitable
for their trade as gum-arabic, and at a fraction
of the cost.

It was their own secret; and, could they
have conducted their future proceedings as
discreetly as they made their experiments,
they might have realised fortunes, and had
the merit of practically introducing an article
of great utility—one which has assisted in
the fortune-making of some of the wealthiest
firms in Lancashire (so long as they held
it as a secret), and which now the Government
of the British empire manufacture for
themselves.

Its subsequent history is not less curious
than that just related. Unfortunately for the
operative block-printers, who discovered it,
their share in its history is soon told.

It is said that six of them subscribed money
to send one of their number to Manchester