off as borders to the pages. An impression
is then taken, upon paper, of the entire set of
pages, and the printed sheet is carefully
examined; faults corrected, and then the great
steam-press begins its labour. Under its
two revolving cylinders are grouped the
plates which represent the two halves of
the forthcoming number of H. W. The two
halves correspond to the two sides of our
weekly sheet. Upon a peak covered with
snowy paper that commands the upper surface
of one cylinder there is a youth. He
dexterously fits the paper, sheet by sheet, upon
the lips of the devouring engine. As it heaves
and works, the paper is drawn rapidly into a
black abyss. It is rolled over the mass of
metal characters, which is perpetually fertilised
with printer's ink by mystic rollers. One cylinder
passes the sheet printed upon one side, to
another. Over that it leaps, and from under
that it is delivered perfect, and placed quietly
upon a table, ready to the fingers of a little
boy, who helps it in its easy birth. The press
works, one among many that appear to be
engaged in voluntary labour side by side.
Men and boys are reaping the advantage of
their industry. Our youth upon the peak
administers white sheets of paper to the busy
monster labouring on our behalf. As fast as
they are put into its mouth, like great square
lozenges, they are all sucked away at the rate
of nine hundred an hour. At the same rate,
completely printed copies of H. W. are laid
upon the table of the second boy and piled by
him into a cube. The dimensions of the cube
are constantly kept under by other boys who
carry parts of it away. But our H. W.
is not even yet ready to appear before the
public.

Who does not entertain a proper horror of
damp sheets? The sheets of H. W. are sent
out of the great hall of steam-presses into a
drying room. There they are hung up and
aired. The sheets of H. W. are in the
next place mangled. They endure a whole
day under a powerful hydraulic press. The
sheets of H. W. are neatly folded by the tidy
hands of women.

The copies of each number which has in
this way run the gauntlet down so long a lane
of labour, are, at last, brought by boys upon
their heads, upon their shoulders, upon their
backs, upon their breasts, over their arms,
and under them, to sixteen, Wellington Street
North, in the Strand. From that place, on a
given day, and punctually after a given hour,
they are issued to a race of individuals who
carry them away in bags, in pouches, in
pockets; in hands, on heads, shoulders, backs;
in cabs, in carts, and in trucks to the
warehouses and shops of the metropolis to be
sold to the public. From the warehouses
they travel in detachments to the railway
stations, and from railway stations many
travel to the ships. So each number at
last finds its owner out, who by some
article he sees in it is perhaps prompted
to become a sensible Voluntary Correspondent,
and send up to H. W. a little bag—or a
large sack—of grist. So the mill goes.

GABRIEL'S MARRIAGE.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER THE FIRST.

ONE night, during the period of the first

French Revolution, the family of François
Sarzeau, a fisherman of Brittany, were all
waking and watching at an unusually late hour
in their cottage on the peninsula of Quiberon,
François had gone out in his boat that evening,
as usual, to fish. Shortly after his departure,
the wind had risen, the clouds had gathered;
and the storm, which had been threatening at
intervals throughout the whole day, burst
forth furiously about nine o'clock. It was
now eleven; and the raging of the wind over
the barren, heathy peninsula still seemed to
increase with each fresh blast that tore its
way out upon the open sea; the crashing of
the waves on the beach was awful to hear;
the dreary blackness of the sky terrible to
behold. The longer they listened to the storm,
the oftener they looked out at it, the fainter
grew the hopes which the fisherman's family
still strove to cherish for the safety of François
Sarzeau and of his younger son who had gone
with him in the boat.

There was something impressive in the
simplicity of the scene that was now passing
within the cottage. On one side of the great
rugged black fire-place crouched two little
girls; the younger half asleep, with her head
in her sister's lap. These were the daughters
of the fisherman; and opposite to them sat
their eldest brother, Gabriel. His right arm
had been badly wounded in a recent encounter
at the national game of the Soule, a sport
resembling our English football; but played on
both sides in such savage earnest by the
people of Brittany as to end always in blood-
shed, often in mutilation, sometimes even in
loss of life. On the same bench with Gabriel
sat his betrothed wife—a girl of eighteen—
clothed in the plain, almost monastic black
and white costume of her native district. She
was the daughter of a small farmer living at
some little distance from the coast. Between
the groups formed on either side of the
fireplace, the vacant space was occupied by the foot
of a truckle bed. In this bed lay a very
old man, the father of François Sarzeau.
His haggard face was covered with deep
wrinkles; his long white hair flowed over
the coarse lump of sacking which served
him for a pillow, and his light grey eyes
wandered incessantly, with a strange expression
of terror and suspicion, from person to
person, and from object to object, in all
parts of the room. Every time when the
wind and sea whistled and roared at their
loudest, he muttered to himself and tossed
his hands fretfully on his wretched coverlid.
On these occasions, his eyes always fixed
themselves intently on a little delf image of