RESIST AND DISCHARGE STENCILLING Travelers in Japan inform us that, with their customary ingenuity, the natives there have developed the use of stencils to a point which quite matches the best achievements of our modern calico printers, even though backed by good dyeing chemists. When a young lady there wishes a new dress, she will draw, perhaps with the help of her best young man, and certainly with the advice and criticism of her family, her favorite design on a piece of brown paper, cut it out in stencil form, and send it to the local dyer, with the proper amount of calico or silk or what not, to be properly applied. Now, in most cases the dyer is instructed to put the pattern on the cloth in colors, blue, black, red, yellow, or mixed shades, and this he does, much as my readers were taught to do in the last chapter, by painting on a stencil paste, to be fixed later by steaming. The Japanese dyer, by the way, has a great advantage over the American craftsman in his steaming apparatus. No matter how small his place, or how poor his equipment, he always is provided with a neat and satisfactory steam chest, consisting of a copper pot set in a brick or stone fireplace, to hold the boiling water, and above it, a close-fitting box with sides made of lacquered paper, double jacketed to avoid condensation in cold weather, which can be kept full of dry steam for hours at a time, and in which the stencilled goods can be steamed thoroughly and well without fear of spoiling them. Sometimes, however, the color is to be applied in another way; the cloth itself is to be colored blue or red or black, and the pattern is to be light, either pure white or some light color on a dark background. The Japanese dyer, from time immemorial, has known how to do this properly, by means of a “Resist.” He prepares a resist paste which he carefully applies to the cloth through the stencil. This is allowed to dry, the cloth is then dyed, and, after the color is properly fixed, it is all thoroughly scrubbed, and the paste, washing off, leaves the cloth, underneath, in its original color.