is mere black ink in aiding us to describe
the dazzling attractions of this little box now
before us! It is about two inches long by an
inch and a half in width; it is one of a kind
which the maker sells wholesale at three
shillings and sixpence per gross, a fraction
above one farthing per box; it is not mere
scaleboard, but real pasteboard, covered with
glazed paper, edged with gold paper, adorned
with a coloured picture on the lid, and
surfaced with gelatine as smooth and lustrous as
glass itself—and all for threepence-halfpenny
per dozen. Its destiny is, we believe, to be
filled with comfits or confectionary, and
then to be sold complete for one penny, or
perhaps twopence. Let us take the liberty
to look into the artistic department of our
friend the box-maker. Here is an artist at
work (for as some tailors keep a poet, so do
some box-makers keep an artist); he is
making new designs for box pictures, and is
copying bits from larger pictures; he does
not attempt the lofty style, but wishes to
catch the eye of penny buyers. The Australian
diggings, Jenny Lind, the Bloomers, the
Duke of Wellington, Uncle Tom's Cabin—all
are fish that comes to his net; he keeps an
eye upon what is passing in the world around
him, seizes on any matter of public interest,
and fixes it down on paper directly, or rather
on stone, for the pictures are lithographed.
Our manufacturer has by him drawers full
and portfolios full of sheets of pictures, some
newly springing into popularity, others passing
into oblivion: the maker and the artist taking
especial care that new beauties shall be ready
to attract the eye before passed beauties have
waned too much. The Duke was a capital
subject; he sold many scores of grosses of
boxes. At present Uncle Tom is the reigning
favourite; for who, we should like to know,
could resist purchasing a box of sugar-plums,
when there is Eva teaching Uncle Tom, or
Eliza crossing the ice, or the Quaker throwing
the big fellow down the precipice, or Topsy
not knowin' nothin' about nobody—all for
one penny? The pictures, whatever be the
subjects, are grouped to the size of a large
sheet of paper; they are engraved upon
stone, and printed off; they are handed up
to children, who colour them: they are then
glazed in a very remarkable way with pure
gelatine, so smooth and glass-like as to excel
any varnish; they are lastly cut up, and
pasted to the lids of the boxes which are to
receive them.

To those who have no opportunity of
testing the greatness of the manufacture of
small things, there is something about pill-
boxes even yet more curious; they are
cheaper by a wide interval than any of the
square boxes (except Congreve boxes, which
are the poorest of the poor), and yet there is
really more manufacture in them, more of
the appliances of mechanical skill. There
is a veteran pill-box maker—the king of
the craft, we believe, in England—residing
not so very, very far from the Artillery
Ground at Finsbury; in his rambling old-
fashioned workshops, with his score or so of
assistants, he makes by millions the neat
little pasteboard boxes for pills, and the cheap
wood or chip boxes for wafers, for ointments,
and other minor purposes; and an hour may
be much worse spent than in looking at the
nimble fingers of these workers.

Is it not a striking fact that chip boxes, each
requiring the work of eleven persons, can bs
sold at one shilling per gross—three for a
farthing? But, this is the case in respect to
the smallest ointment boxes met with at the
chemist's!

A box of this kind, an inch and a half in
diameter, an inch high, with a lid extending
a quarter of an inch down over the box—let
us stand by and see such a box made. In
the first place, a plank of soft deal is selected,
rather more than an inch and a half in thick-
ness; a shaving or veneer from the edge of
this plank will be wide enough for the
diameter of the box. The plank is so fixed that
a planing machine can pass along it, and take
off a film of the required width; and this
is repeated until the plank is planed away.
Another, one inch in thickness, is similarly
planed to form the vertical sides of the box;
and a third, a quarter of an inch thick, yields
the strips which are to make the overhanging
part of the cover. Out of the broader strips,
the circular discs are cut which are to form the
top and bottom of the box; and this is done
with astonishing rapidity by means of a punch
and a wooden mallet: the punch is made of
hardened steel, and is kept very sharp; the
scaleboard is laid down on a block, the punch
is placed on it with the left hand, and a blow
with the mallet drives out a circular piece of
wood; the man shifts the wood, or the
punch, or both, almost as rapidly as the eye
can follow his movements; and in a few
seconds the punch becomes filled with a pile
of twenty or thirty discs, which he removes
to make way for others. Sometimes the film
is cut from a much thicker plank, so as to
economise material, by cutting one row of
discs in the interstices of another row. The
punch for the cover-disc is a little larger than
that for the box-disc, to enable the cover to
fit properly in its place. While this punching
is in progress, a dapper little maiden is giving
the proper twist-about tendency to the strips
which are to form the sides of the box and
cover. These strips are cut to the required
lengths, and are drawn between two rollers,
so adjusted that each strip becomes curled
partially round, the grain of the wood
rendered pliable, and the surfaces glossy.

Every one of these chip boxes, and every
lid, is shaped in a tinned iron mould or
cylinder, in a manner the rapidity of which
almost exceeds belief. One woman, with a
vessel of hot glue before her, takes up one by
one the strips which are to form the sides of
the boxes, and dabs a modicum of glue on one