_Fiddling to some Purpose._ Stourbridge, a smoky town in Worcestershire, England, has long been famous for its iron, glass and fire-brick works, and also for its _nails_, as long as they were produced by hand-work. For the Crystal Palace, of 1851, a Stourbridge "hand" received an order to make a thousand gold and a thousand silver and a thousand iron _tacks_—the whole three thousand not to weigh more than _three_ grains. Nailmaking by machinery, which was accomplished in Sweden before it was perfected in New England, was drawing the trade away from England, and a Stourbridge man, one Richard Foley, resolved to get into the heart of the mystery. The case is curious, as showing the danger that has always beset successful inventors, and has often converted the golden hills into mere rocks of talc, and reduced many a secret El Dorado into commonplace little workshops. Foley, who was a very good violinist, took his fiddle, fiddled his way to the Swedish splitting mills, and then fiddled his way into them. As often happens with musicians, he presently conceived the idea that there was "a great deal of brains _outside_ of his head." At any rate, he could look and speak foolishly, but his fiddling was wonderfully good. No one suspected that "soft" fellow, who lounged about with an idiotic want of expression in his face, but was ready to play whenever asked to do so. He ingratiated himself so thoroughly with the workmen that they gave him a shakedown inside the mill or factory. He quietly exercised his faculty of observation, saw all the processes of manipulation, and one day was missing. He carried home their secrets of work, and fame and fortune became his own. _German Silver._ German silver derives its name from the fact that its first introduction in the arts, to any great extent, was made in Germany. It is, however, nothing more than the white copper long known in China. It does not contain a particle of real silver, but is an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc. _Isabella Color._ The Archduke Albert married the infanta Isabella, daughter of Philip II., King of Spain, with whom he had the Low Countries in dowry. In the year 1602 he laid siege to Ostend, then in the possession of the heretics, and his pious princess, who attended him in that expedition, made a vow that she would not change her clothes until the city was taken. Contrary to expectation, it was three years before the place was reduced, in which time the linen of her highness had acquired a hue which, from the superstition of the princess and the times, was much admired, and was adopted by the court fashionables under the name of the "Isabella color." It is a whitish yellow, or soiled buff—better imagined than described. _Parisian Scarlet._