"It is very easy to feel the difference, if not to see it, between cut and pressed glass. The latter always has these blunted angles to the facets, and has a certain vagueness and want of purpose about it; then it is not so heavy or so sparkling; there is a certain exhilaration in the gleam of cut glass that fits it for purposes to which the other would be entirely unsuited. Fancy Champagne in a pressed goblet, or tuberoses and japonicas in a pressed vase, or attar in a pressed flaçon!"
"Fortunately," replied Monsieur, to whom this aside had been addressed, "the persons who consider Champagne, japonicas, and attar of roses necessaries of life are very well able to provide cut-glass receptacles for them. But isn't it worth one's while to be proud of a country where every artisan's wife has her tumblers, her goblets, her vases, of pressed glass, certainly, but 'as good, to her mind, as cut,' to quote our friend? and don't you think it better that twenty-two thousand dozen pressed tumblers should be sold at ten cents apiece than one-third that number of cut ones at thirty cents, leaving all those who cannot pay the higher price to drink out of"——
"Clam-shells? Well, perhaps. Equality and the rights of man are very nice, of course, but I"——
"Like cut glass better," retorted Monsieur, laughing, while Miselle turned a little indignantly to the guide, who was saying,—
"The reason the edges have that blunted look is partly because they can't be struck as sharp as they can be ground, and then being heated in the glory-holes, and again in the leers softens them down a little. In fact, the very idea of annealing is to make the outside particles of the glass run together just a very little, so as to fill up the pores as it were, and make a smoother surface. If this were not done, it would fly all to pieces the first time it was put into hot water."
"The cut glass is not annealed, then?"
"Oh, yes, after it is blown it is; and although the grinding takes off part of the surface, I suppose it fills up the pores at the same time."
"Cut glass is more apt to break in hot water than pressed or simply blown glass," remarked Madame.
"And is all cut glass blown in the first place?" asked Optima.
"No, Miss, a good deal of it is pressed and then ground, either wholly or in part; but this is not so clear or free from waves as the blown. Out here is a man blowing liqueur-glasses. Perhaps you would like to see that."