for the salt you use on your potatoes. He does not have lace made, except now and then a figure that cannot be obtained, to fill out a piece that is being transferred or altered, and for which the lady is willing to pay a good price. He says laces are made so much cheaper in the old country, that when imported, paying even a duty of twenty or twenty-five per cent., they are sold as cheap as those he makes. He says he pays his girls nearly twice as much as they are paid in Europe. His report I thought contradictory, and supposed he feared competition. I was told by an English woman, who had been accustomed to making lace from six years of age until the last ten, that it takes seven or eight years to learn lace making in all its parts. She says there are twenty-one processes gone through with in making every kind but pillow lace, in which there are but five processes. When she was a child, none but common laces were made in France, and the making of their finest laces they learned from the English, who went over to France. =197. Lace Menders.= I called on M. W., a lace mender. "In New York, she has received from one store, Mme. G.'s, from $20 to $25 a week for work. She thinks in a few years very little work will be ordered from the stores; it will be done by those who make a business of it. The stores derive a handsome profit. She did a piece for one store for $3, that she knows the lady paid $5 for having done; and another piece at $3, that the lady paid $10 for--the storekeeper having such profits for nothing but merely sending it to the lace transferrer. She makes a comfortable living, but works at night as well as through the day. It has injured her eyes and made her nervous. She has had two little girls learning to mend, alter, and transfer lace; one received her board and clothing for her work for three years. One girl, that spent two years with her, is now obtaining a livelihood by her work. She thinks if a bright, steady girl of thirteen should spend two years at it, and then have friends to start her in business, she would be well able to support herself. Lace mending is a separate branch from lace making. In England, if a person can obtain the names of one or two wealthy families, it will at once establish them in business. In doing up lace, little girls can put the pins in the edges to keep it in place until dried. C. and Mme. G., she says, pay her as her customers would, but she prefers establishing herself, and does not so well like store work. Her customers recommend her to their friends, and so she will gradually become known. Lace mending is a nice, clean, respectable business, and can be done at home." * * * * *