by the great companies which manufacture watches by machinery.  The slow, uncertain, and expensive work of the poor toilers who made watches by hand has been superseded by the swift, unerring, and beautiful operations of machinery and steam.  Now, sir, the great purpose of my life is to introduce machinery into art, and, ultimately, steam.  And yet I will have no shams, no chromos.  Everything shall be real—­the work of the brush.  Here, sir,” he continued, showing me into a long room filled with workmen, “you see the men engaged in putting together the frames on which to stretch my canvases.  Every stick is cut, planed, and jointed at a mill in Vermont, and sent on here by the car-load.  Beyond are the workmen cutting up, stretching, and preparing the canvas, bales upon bales of which are used in a day.  At the far end are the mills for grinding and mixing colors.  And now we will go to the upper floors, and see the true art-work.  Here, sir,” he said, continuing to talk as we walked through the rooms on the various floors, “is the landscape and marine department.  That row of men are putting in skies; they do nothing else.  Each has his copy before him, and, day after day, month after month, paints nothing but that sky; and of course he does it with great rapidity and fidelity.  Above, on those shelves, are sky-pots of every variety; blue-serene pots, tempest pots, sunset pots in compartments, morning-gray pots, and many others.  Then the work passes to the middle-ground painters, who have their half-tone pots within easy reach.  After that the foreground men take it up, and the figurists put in the men and animals.  That man there has been painting that foreground cow ever since the first of August.  He can now put her in three and a half times in fifteen minutes, and will probably rise to sixteen cows an hour by the end of this month.  These girls do nothing but put white-caps to waves.  There’s a great demand at present for the windy marine.  This next room is devoted to portraits to order.  You see that row of old ladies without heads, each holding a pair of spectacles, and with one finger in the Bible to keep the place; that’s very popular, and we put in a head when the photograph is sent.  There is a great rage at present for portraits of babies without any clothes on.  Here is a lot of undraped infants with bodies all finished, but with no heads.  We can finish them to order at very short notice.  I have one girl who puts in all the dimples.  You would be surprised to see what a charming dimple she can make with one twist of her brush.  Long practice at one thing, sir, is the foundation of the success of this great establishment.  Take that girl away from her dimple-pot, and she is nothing.  She is now upstairs, putting dimples into a large Correggio order from the West.  This next room is our figure department, battle-pieces, groups, single figures, everything.  As you have seen before, each man only copies from the original that part which is his specialty.  In addition