begins a pasteboard larva, is swathed and pressed and glued into the
condition of a chrysalis, and at last alights on the centre table gorgeous
in gold and velvet, the perfect _imago_. The cases for portraits are made
in lengths, and cut up, somewhat as they say ships are built in Maine, a
mile at a time, to be afterwards sawed across so as to become sloops,
schooners, or such other sized craft as may happen to be wanted.

Each single process in the manufacture of elaborate products of skill
often times seems and is very simple. The workmen in large establishments,
where labor is greatly subdivided, become wonderfully adroit in doing a
fraction of something. They always remind us of the Chinese or the old
Egyptians. A young person who mounts photographs on cards all day long
confessed to having never, or almost never, seen a negative developed,
though standing at the time within a few feet of the dark closet where the
process was going on all day long. One forlorn individual will perhaps
pass his days in the single work of cleaning the glass plates for
negatives. Almost at his elbow is a toning bath, but he would think it a
good joke, if you asked him whether a picture had lain long enough in the
solution of gold or hyposulphite.

We always take a glance at the literature which is certain to adorn the
walls in the neighborhood of each operative's bench or place for work. Our
friends in the manufactory we are speaking of were not wanting in this
respect. One of the girls had pasted on the wall before her,

"_Kind words can never die._"

It would not have been easy to give her a harsh one after reading her
chosen maxim. "The Moment of Parting" was twice noticed. "The Haunted
Spring", "Dearest May", "The _Bony_ Boat", "Yankee Girls", "Yankee Ship