At the end of the box they had a pump working, and it was pumping the paste into what they called a _press_. It was too funny for anything. I couldn't more than half understand it. But it looks something like a baby-crib, only it has slats across the top, and they're close together. They have a lot of bags inbetween the slats, and the clay gets into the bags and gets pressed flat, so that most of the water is squeezed out. When they take it out of the bags it looks something like a sheet of shortcake before it's cut or baked. Then they roll a lot of them together, and that's what they make dishes out of. They call it _biscuit_. The man took us down into the cellar under the little room to show us the engine that made the paste and pumped and pressed the clay. I was afraid, and didn't want to go down, but papa said it was only a little one. It was nice and clean down there, with a neat brick floor, but awful hot. I was glad to come up. [Illustration: THE KILN AND SAGGERS.] After the little room there's one big room where they don't do much of anything. It is like a large shed, for it is dark and has no floor. The dressing-room where we were first is on one side, and the dark room where the big chimneys are, is back of it. We went through it, and over to one side and up the stairs to the second story. It's nice up there. It's one great big room, five times as big as our Sunday School room, with ever so many windows. All around the sides and down the middle, and cross-ways, and out in the wings are shelves, piled full of brand-new dishes. And there are tables all along the walls, and that's where they make them. I could stand and look all day. I saw two boys throwing up a great big lump of clay and catching it; then cutting it with a string and putting the pieces together again, then throwing it up again, until it made me dizzy to look at them. I asked the man what they were doing, and he said, _wedging the clay_. That means taking the air out. They keep on doing that until there are no air-bubbles in it. We stopped and talked to a man who was making a sugar-bowl, and he told us how he did it. All the men have on the table in front of them a lump of clay, a wheel, some moulds, a sharp knife, a bucket of water with a sponge in it, and something like the slab of a round, marble-topped table, only it's made of plaster Paris, to work on. [Illustration: MOULD FOR A CUP.] And do you know what the potter's-wheel is? It's as old as the hills and it's in the Bible, but I guess everybody don't know what it is. It looks as if it was made of hard, smooth, baked white clay, and is something like a grindstone, only not half as thick. The grindstone stands up, but this lays flat, with its round side turned up, like the head of a barrel. And it's set on a pivot, like the needle of the compass in our geographies.