“It’s most important that the size should dry. Now those papers (producing some covered with a dead red coating of the size preparation) have been done four days, and yet they’re not dry, although to you they appear so, but I can tell that they feel tough, and not crisp as they ought to. When the size is damp it makes them adhere to one another when I am laying the stuff on, and it sweats through and makes them heavy, and then they tears when I opens them.
“When I’m working, I first size the entire sheet. We put it on the table, and then we have a big brush and plaster it over. Then I gives it to my wife, and she hangs it up on a line. We can hang up a gross at a time here, and then the room is pretty full, and must seem strange to anybody coming in, though to us it’s ordinary enough.”
The man was about to exhibit to us his method of proceeding, when his attention was drawn off by a smell which the moving of the different pots had caused. “How strong this size smells, Charlotte!” he said to his wife.
“It’s the damp and heat of the room does it,” the wife replied; and then the narrative went on.
“Before putting on the composition I cut up the papers into slips as fast as possible, that don’t take long.”
“We can cut ’em in first style,” interrupted the wife.
“I can cut up four gross an hour,” said a boy, who was present.
“I don’t think you could, Johnny,” said the man. “Two gross is nearer the mark, to cut ’em evenly.”
“It’s only seventy sheets,” remonstrated the lad, “and that’s only a little more than one a minute.”
A pile of entire newspapers was here brought out, and all of them coloured red on one side, like the leaves of the books in which gold-leaf is kept.