Some of the departments in this manufactory are noisy. Chocolate is a troublesome material, and it won't work well, save at certain temperatures. It has a decided disinclination to pack itself solid. A vast quantity of small tablets of chocolate are used. To make them the soft chocolate is placed in small tin moulds, and these are put on a rocking table, and the tins dance and rattle until the chocolate assumes the proper shape and consistency. Then sugared almonds in the act of manufacture make quite a racket. The almonds are surrounded with a sugar paste, and then put into revolving cylinders, and they roll and roll, making a sound like theatrical thunder.
The word bonbon is French, and really means "good-good." When we study early language, at the very beginning we find that primitive races had a way of reduplicating the same syllable, so it was a smart child who must have invented the word bonbon, which has about its equivalent in our "goodies."
You may rest satisfied that when you are lucky enough to get a box of these sugar-plums it is the result of an endless amount of painstaking labor and exceeding niceness, but it is questionable whether that will stop you for a moment in putting one of these pretty things into your mouth. Maybe when the very last sugar-plum is eaten you may think about the way they are made, and then you can ask for more, so as to be fully impressed with the cleverness of the bonbon art.
[SANTA CLAUS IN MOROCCO.]
BY HESTER CALDWELL OAKLEY.
Queer old Santa took the steamer
Over from Gibraltar,
Mounted on a donkey-pack,
With a rope for halter.
Thought he'd do his duty by
All the little Arabs,
Fill their stockings up with coins,
Bellyunes, and scarebs.
But his jolly old face fell
When he reached a village—
Tiny huts just thatched with straw,
One yard square for tillage.
All around he gazed aghast,
Then he said, "By Jim'ny!
What a savage, heathen place.
Not a single chimney!"
Gasped again, and paler grew,
Muttered, feebly: "Shocking!
'Mong these little Moorish kids
Not a blessed stocking!"
