about 1,354,000 in one of its ordinary 12-page issues.  A 32-page Sunday issue of the New York Herald contains nearly, if not quite, 2,500,000 distinct types and other pieces of metal, each of which must be separately handled between thumb and finger twice—­once put into the case and once taken out of it—­each issue of the paper.  No one inexperienced in this delicate work has the slightest conception of the intensity of attention, fixity of eye, deftness of touch, readiness of intelligence, exhaustion of vitality, and destruction of brain and nerve which enters into the daily newspaper from type-setters alone.

Each type is marked upon one side by slight nicks, by sight and touch of which the compositor is guided in rapidly placing them right side up in the line.  They are taken, one by one, between thumb and forefinger, while the mind not only spells out each word, but is always carrying phrases and whole sentences ahead of the fingers, and each letter, syllable and word is set in its order in lines in the composing stick, each line being spaced out in the stick so as to exactly fit the column width, this process being repeated until the stick is full.  Then the stickful is emptied upon a galley.  Then, when the page or the paper is “up,” as the printers phrase it, the galleys are collected, and the foreman makes up the pages, article by article, as they come to us in the printed paper—­the preliminary processes of printing proofs from the galleys, reading them by the proof readers, who mark the errors, and making the corrections by the compositors (each one correcting his own work), having been quietly and swiftly going on all the while.  The page is made up on a portable slab of iron, upon which it is sent to the stereotyping room.  There wet stereotyping paper, several sheets in thickness, is laid over the page, and this almost pulpy paper is rapidly and dexterously beaten evenly all over with stiff hair brushes until the soft paper is pressed down into all the interstices between the type; then this is covered with blankets and the whole is placed upon a steam chest, where it is subjected to heat and pressure until the wet paper becomes perfectly dry.  Then, this dried and hardened paper, called a matrix, is placed in a circular mould, and melted stereotype metal is poured in and cooled, resulting in the circular plate, which is rapidly carried to the press room, clamped upon its cylinder, and when all the cylinders are filled, page by page in proper sequence, the pressman gives the signal, the burr and whirr begin, and men and scarcely less sentient machines enter upon their swift race for the early trains.  As a matter of general interest it may be remarked that this whole process of stereotyping a page, from the time the type leaves the composing room until the plate is clamped upon the press, averages fifteen minutes, and that cases are upon record when the complex task has been accomplished in eleven minutes.