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Holidays in Eastern France by Matilda Betham-Edwards
page 37 of 184 (20%)

Here it is highly amusing to watch the apparently intelligent machines
which divide the chocolate into half-pound lumps, the process being
accomplished with incredible swiftness. Huge masses of chocolate in this
stage awaiting the final preparation are seen here and there, all
destined at last to be put half a pound at a time into a little baking
tin, and to be baked like a hot cross bun, the name of Menier being
stamped on at the same time. A good deal of manipulation is necessary in
this process; but we must go down a stage lower to see the dexterity and
swiftness with which the chief manual tasks in the fabrication of
chocolate are performed.

Here women are chiefly employed, and their occupation is to envelope the
half-pound cakes of chocolate in three papers, first silver, next white,
and finally sealing it up in the well-known yellow cover familiar to all
of us. These feminine fingers work so fast, and with such marvellous
precision, that, if the intricate pieces of machinery we have just
witnessed seemed gifted with human intelligence and docility, on the
other hand the women at work in this department appeared like animated
machines; no blundering, no halting, no alteration of working pace.
Their fluttering fingers, indeed, worked with beautiful promptitude and
regularity, and as everybody in M. Menier's City of Chocolate is
well-dressed and cheerful, there was nothing painful in the monotony of
their toil or unremitting application.

On the same floor are the packing departments, where we see the cases
destined for all parts of the world.

Thus quickly and easily we have descended the ladder of learning, and
have acquired some faint notion of the way in which the hard, brown,
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