"That," said our other companion, holding his hat to prevent the wind from blowing it aboard the Gravesend steamer (which was not to start for ten minutes), "has been the stock tale of all writers on the subject, from Pliny down to Ure; but, Sir Gardiner Wilkinson has put it out of the power of future authors to repeat it. That indefatigable haunter of Egyptian tombs discovered minute representations of glass-blowing, painted on tombs of the time of Orsirtasin the First, some sixteen hundred years before the date of Pliny's story. Indeed, a glass bead, bearing the name of a king who lived fifteen hundred years before Christ, was found in another tomb by Captain Henvey, the specific gravity of which is precisely that of English crown-glass." "You seem to know all about it!" exclaimed the loud-voiced man. "Being a director of a plate-glass company I have made it my business to learn all that books could teach me on the subject." "I should like to see glass made," said the vociferous admirer of Dr. Johnson, "especially plate-glass." To this, the other replied, with ready politeness, "If your wish be very strong, and you have an hour to spare, I shall be happy to show you the works to which I am going--those of the Thames Plate Glass Company. They are close by." "The fact is," was the reply, "Mrs. Bossle (I'm sorry to say Mrs. Bossle is an invalid) expects me down to Gravesend to tea; but an hour won't matter much." "And you, sir?" said the civil gentleman, addressing me. My desire was equally strong, and the next hour equally my own; for, as the friend, whom a negligent public had driven to emigration, was not to sail until the next morning, it did not much matter whether I took my last farewell of him at Gravesend early or late that evening. Tracking our guide through dock gates, over narrow drawbridges, along quays; now, dodging the rigging of ships; now, tripping over cables, made "taut" to rings; now falling foul of warping-posts (for it was getting dusk); one minute, leaping over deserted timber; the next, doubling stray casks; the next, winding among the strangest ruins of dismantled steamboats, for which a regular hospital seemed established in that region of mud and water; then, emerging into dirty lanes, and turning the corners of roofless houses; we finished an exciting game of Follow-my-Leader, at a pair of tall gates. One of these admitted us into the precincts of the southernmost of the six manufactories of plate glass existing in this country.