It is interesting to study some of them closely and see how neatly this tying is done and how little the time of these unknown workmen must be valued at. For apart from the large picture stencils which, of course, would be worth taking a great deal of pains with, some of the simplest and most ordinary of their native stencils are not only cut but tied in, with extraordinary skill. One of these, valued here at but a few cents, consisted of a background of small figures in shape and size very much like a capital O of the type of this page. The stencil measures some eighteen by ten inches, and there must be between fifteen hundred and two thousand of these O figures on it. Some few of these are now imperfect, but with the exception of a dozen or two, every single one of all these has had the centre cut out, and then sewed into place again, from the sides, so as to be in the exact centre, without a single “stop” or “tie” on the whole paper. _Brushes._—With stencils so very delicately made, it is evident that our crude American style of rubbing in the color, with heavy hands and stiff bristle brushes, would not be much of a success! About one good rub with a brush like that, and every hair in sight would be torn and broken, and what was a minute before a work of art would be a torn mass of brown paper. Whether any of our American craftsmen have light enough hands to use, successfully, a fine Japanese stencil is doubtful. Personally, I could no more stencil six inches with any of them without ruining it or making a mess of the cloth than I could in a year cut, without tearing, six square inches of any one of a score of cheap and ordinary Japanese stencils which I own, either presented to me or sold at a very low price, as being really too insignificant in value to amount to anything. But at any rate, the Japanese do not use a stiff bristle brush. Their brushes, in general, are of two sorts, as shown in Fig. 14. One is a sort of pad, often quite large, five or six inches in diameter, made of rabbit’s fur, tightly bound together with cord or wire, and with a bundle of small sticks spreading out to enclose the pad, and drawn together and tied above, at the upper end, in a sort of pyramid. [Illustration: FIG. 15—JAPANESE STENCIL, SHOWING HOLES PUNCHED BY HAND TOOL] [Illustration: FIG. 16—JAPANESE STENCIL, EXACT SIZE, SHOWING USE OF STOPS] [Illustration: FIG. 17—JAPANESE STENCIL, EXACT SIZE, SHOWING USE OF SEWING INSTEAD OF STOPS]