If you will step into the office once more, we will show you specimens of our various styles."

With weary feet, eyes, ears, and brain, but with unabated interest, Miselle gladly returned to the pleasant office, and was shown a perfect museum of hats, arranged upon shelves protected by glass doors. Conspicuous among the rest were two broad-brimmed, drab-colored, velvet-finish, soft hats, measuring eight inches' diameter in the crown, and eighteen from front to back of the brim. These had been moulded upon a block turned especially for them, in answer to an order from a distant city. Besides these were all the ordinary styles of men's hats, stage hats, military and naval hats, boys' and infants' hats, and every caprice of feminine fantasy with which Fashion at present adorns her pretty head. Among these were the dazzling white croquet-hats, made of pure white fur, and pounced with chalk, which leaves the surface looking like a new-fallen snow-bank.

"I understand that yours is the largest establishment in Massachusetts," said Mentor to one of the heads.

"Almost the only one," replied he, with modest pride. “There are, I believe, two others in Boston making fur hats in small quantities, but they have to buy their hat-bodies of us, or send out of the State for them. Ours is the only right to use the Forming-Machine in Massachusetts."

"And what is the extent of your business?" pursued Mentor.

"When we are running our full force, we finish fifty dozen of hats in a day, — that is to say, a hat a minute for the ten hours. We employ a hundred and fifty hands, and manufacture eighteen thousand pounds of imported fur a year."

"That is doing a good business, -is it not?"

"Yes, it is very well for this section of the country, but a leading house in New York turns off as many as ten thousand hats in a day when it chooses. New York and New Jersey are the hatters of the Union, after all. We cannot compete with them."

"Not perhaps in covering heads, but, when it comes to furnishing them, I fancy Massachusetts need yield to no one," said Mentor, consolingly; and the heads smiled approval of the leading article of faith in the creed of a NewEnglander.

"Are there any silk hats manufactured in Boston?" asked Mentor, putting on his own hat with a new appreciation of its meaning.

"Yes, here is the address of a house which manufactures silk hats, and also felt of similar styles to those you have just seen. You had better give the firm a call."

Mentor looked doubtfully at his weary companion, but she declaring herself in the first flush and vigor of morning strength, it was resolved to act upon the suggestion; and, after thanking the courteous heads for their sacrifice of time, breath, and trouble, Mentor and Miselle took leave, and shortly after presented themselves upon their new field of observation.

Here they were politely received, and readily admitted to the penetralia of the establishment, in spite of several staring announcements of "No Admittance" upon the various doors.

Glancing through the rooms devoted to the manufacture of felt hats, they found the processes nearly identical with those they had just seen, with the exception of forming the hat-bodies, which were bought of the house they had just left. Ascending to the top of the building, they found two large chambers devoted to silk hats, and were in the first place shown the bodies, made in the same manner as the fur or felt hat, but much thinner and lighter, -a silk hat for city wear not generally exceeding three ounces in weight, although those intended for the country, where a hat is expected to meet with rougher usage and last a longer time, are more substantial. Still more fragile than the three-ounce hat is the gossamer, where the foundation, instead of felt, is only stiffened cambric, and is incapable of enduring the slightest hardship.

The felted body, dipped in hot water, is stretched upon a block of the shape at that moment in fashion, and, when dry, is stiffened with a solution of gum shellac and alcohol. This is covered with a coating of varnish to prevent it from subsequently striking through to the surface, and this again is washed over with liquid glue; when this is thoroughly dry, the cover of fine silk plush, cut and sewed to fit the hat-body, is carefully drawn on, brought into place, and then smoothed all over with a hot iron. The warmth, penetrating to the glue, dissolves it; and in drying again it connects the plush above and the felt beneath in a union only to be dissolved by a severe wetting.

The hat is next placed upon a revolving cylinder, where it is polished with soft cloths to the required brilliancy. Next it is lined, generally with watered or embossed paper, a strip of enamelled leather is sewed about the edge, it is fitted with an under-brim of cloth or silk, and finally bound and banded.

The plush covering of these hats is imported, the best coming from Martin, of Paris. It is cut to fit the body in three pieces; the tip, or crown, and the covering of the brim being sewn to the upright piece so carefully that the point of junction is almost invisible in the detached cover, quite so after it has been fitted and glued to the body. Equally invisible upon the completed hat is the diagonal line of junction down the side, where one edge of the cover is lapped over the other and pressed together with the hot irons and revolving brushes of the finishing process.

Completed, the hat is nicely enveloped in tissue paper, packed, and forwarded to the retail dealer, who may, if he choose, style it either French or English, although the American hat is fully equal to the French, and superior to the English, which, like some other Britannic growths, is heavy and clumsy. To be sure, however, the humidity of the English atmosphere would prevent the use of a hat as light as those worn in America.

solete, I suppose," remarked Mentor, to the pleasant young gentleman who had shown the silk-hat rooms and imparted much of the above information.

"O no," replied he to this query; "we made some last year. Those white hats, with long silky fur, so much worn last summer, were beaver hats. The body is made like that of any other hat, and, while it is still soft and wet, the beaver fur is laid on in flakes, and felted in by means of a bow."

"Of a bow!" exclaimed Miselle, incredulously.

"Yes. A long bow is strung with catgut, and this string is gently snapped across the fur after it is laid upon the body. The jar of the blow causes it to adhere, and it finally becomes incorporated with the felt."

66

"I believe the long-bow' part of it," murmured Miselle in spite of Mentor's warning glances; but subsequent inquiry proved not only the truth of this statement, but the fact that, until within a few years, the fur hats now replaced by silk ones were made in the same

manner.

Full fed with information, facts, theories, and speculations, Mentor and his charge at last bade farewell to their obliging guide, and to the study of hats, and returned to the minor pursuits of life.

The next day Miselle found herself in company with the Philosopher and Captain Sentry, who pelted each other with Hegel and Social Science.

"You will not deny that something and nothing are identical," argued the Philosopher.

"No. But as for being and becoming constituting the same principle —-” But Miselle, who had listened until she felt tempted to jump up and scream, here interposed: "O, please don't say those dreadful things any more. Tell me about hats instead."

The superior beings smiled with that air of good-humored forbearance so soothing to the feminine spirit, and Captain Sentry said: "I do not know

was upon a commission, when it became in order to inquire concerning the character of hatters as a class. One master-hatter gave his evidence with great energy to the effect that they were by nature a reckless and dissipated set of men, earning large wages, and spending them freely in various ill-advised fashions. Against this we received the rebutting testimony of another employer, who declared that the Boston hatters, at any rate, are as sober, well-behaved, and respectable a class of men as are to be found in any mechanical guild. The last man was a Bostonian, the first from New Jersey, however; and it is possible that the influences of Social-"

"Thank you," hastily interposed Miselle, "I have no doubt that the Boston man was perfectly correct. I have seen more than two hundred hatters within the last two days, and noticed them particularly as a very intelligent and wellappearing set of men. I am quite sure at least that the men in the sizing-room are good men, for they are constantly subjecting themselves to the ordeal of boiling water, and endure it wonderfully."

She spoke with conviction, and as Captain Sentry only smiled in reply, she thought him convinced, and turned to the Philosopher, who, shading his eyes with his hand, and, apparently unconscious of the vicinity of any human being, remarked in a dreary manner: "Hats! why, the world has always been hatted more or less. The ancient Romans, to be sure, went bareheaded as a rule; but at sacred rites, at games, festivals, in war, or on a journey, the head was covered, sometimes with a helmet, sometimes with a woollen cap or bonnet called the pileus, also worn under the helmet, or with a narrow-brimmed felt hat called the petasus, and resembling the modern hat much more than modern men resemble the Romans. Caligula permitted these hats to be worn at the theatre as screens from the direct rays of the sun. Old persons wore the pileus, or woollen cap, for the sake of warmth, and manu

mitted slaves as a badge of freedom. In fact, they received a cap with their freedom-papers as we call them at the South."

"Then the cap has always been a badge of freedom?”

"Yes. After Cæsar's death, Brutus and Cassius issued coins bearing a cap between two daggers, and after Nero's death many Romans assumed caps in token of having recovered their liberty. Of course you know all about the Swiss liberty-cap, with Tell, Gessler, and all that sort of thing; and next door to them are the Netherlanders, who, upon liberating themselves from the Spanish yoke, added a hat to their national insignia.”

"As for the cap-and-dagger coinsʼissued after the murder of Cæsar, it was adding insult to injury; for he, poor fellow! was bald, and, of all the honors heaped upon him by the Senate, chiefly valued the laurel crown, because it concealed his infirmity," suggested Captain Sentry.

"Mrs. S. A. Allen not being of Roman renown," irreverently added Miselle, while the Philosopher went dreamily on: "Cæsar, in dying, wrapped his mantle about his head, and the action, though pathetic, was probably instinctive; for the mantle cape or toga was used by the men of his time as a covering to the head as well as the body. In later days the Romans wore a sort of great-coat with a hood to it when on a journey or in stormy or chilly weather. This hood was often covered with a rough shag, or pile, for the sake of warmth, and was of various colors. The garment itself was worn by both sexes, and was sometimes made of skins. The Romans - "

"Never mind about the Romans any more, please," interposed the audacious Miselle, "but tell me, instead, how long has there been such a race as hatters, and when did they begin the present style of manufacture?"

"The first guild or trade-association of hatters," promptly replied the Philosopher, "was in Nuremburg in 1360. They were called Felzkappenmachers.

rections in broken English and broken French; here and there a gendarme, stoical and polite, stood like a light-house in the midst of the surging sea of confusion; and, beyond the chain that ran along from the Custom-house to the landing-place of the steamers, a score or so of sailors and fishwomen idling and watching. The last bell rings, the passengers are all on board, the last porter staggers up the plank, execrated in English and French. The puffing of steam suddenly ceases. The gangway is withdrawn, the ropes loosened, and the "Alliance" steams slowly out of dock in the pleasant morning sunshine. The mate of that admirable vessel, as he goes round closing the cabin windows, stands and waves his cap high over his head, a parting signal to a pretty young woman with a child in her arms, who stands and watches the departure of the steamer. Her eyes look seaward long after the fishwomen have turned to their baskets again, and the sailors lounged off to more exciting scenes, and the great doors of the Custom-house have rolled to with a slam. Then she turns and walks thoughtfully away.

Early as it was, Épiphanie had already been up as far as the Faubourg de la Barre to speed Jeanne on her homeward journey, and had met Marie Robbe and Monsieur Bouffle on their way down to Madame Farge's. After that, till he waved his signal, she had been with Pierre. But there was still that important purchase to make which had detained her in town. Before going up into the Grande Rue, however, she again crossed the dock bridge, and dropped in to say a neighborly "good day "to Madame Legros, and to inquire about François, whom she had not seen since the night before.

Could Madame Legros tell her where François and Gabriel Ducrés were, for to be sure they are together.

"O yes, both went out a good two hours ago. François, when he found the boat need not return to Verangeville, had come in, and, after changing his jacket, had gone out, saying he had

business in the Rue St. Remi. Gabriel Ducrés had gone to Arques; he had passed the door but a quarter of an hour ago, and said he was just on his way."

"It is a long journey to Arques, no doubt?" said Epiphanie, who evidently had some interest in that young man's movements also.

“O, not so far, if you take the short way by the river, and through the fields. A good walker will do it in an hour and a half. He said something about being back again by two o'clock, as he had to start for home to-night."

nie.

"To Vallée d'Allon!" said Épipha

"I don't know; he said simply 'home,' and I asked him no more questions: to speak the plain truth, I was tired of his eternal 'yes' or 'no.' I have never seen a young man like him. Ma foi, chère amie! when I have cooked a good meal I like a man to say his grace and eat it with an appetite, not push it away as if it were medicine. Père Defére I have known all my life; a better man does not live; he greets one pleasantly, has always some little news to tell one, and takes an interest like a Christian in the little concerns of the neighbors that one has to relate. He does n't stare at one when one speaks to him, as if one was an image, or sit with his head bent down as if at the confessional, just like a purple cornpoppy in August, eating nothing, drinking nothing, saying nothing. But," continued Madame Legros, whose pent-up irritation on the subject of her unsatisfactory visitor had found considerable relief in this little explosion, "I packed him up a good dinner, though I dare say he will not touch a morsel of it, and bring it all back, dried up and stale, — for, as I said to my husband just now, who knows but that being on the water so long yesterday has upset his stomach; for a landsman is but a poor creature, after all."

That afternoon, when Jean Farge had gone out, and old Madame Farge sat spinning by the fire, Épiphanie took her work and seated herself in the sunny