- end_line
- 3970
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3889
- text
- Leading my horse close to the door from which she had come, I knocked.
Another pale, blue girl appeared, shivering in the doorway as, to
prevent the blast, she jealously held the door ajar.
"Nay, I mistake again. In God's name shut the door. But hold, is there
no man about?"
That moment a dark-complexioned well-wrapped personage passed, making
for the factory door, and spying him coming, the girl rapidly closed
the other one.
"Is there no horse-shed here, Sir?"
"Yonder, the wood-shed," he replied, and disappeared inside the factory.
With much ado I managed to wedge in horse and pung between scattered
piles of wood all sawn and split. Then, blanketing my horse, and piling
my buffalo on the blanket's top, and tucking in its edges well around
the breastband and breeching, so that the wind might not strip him
bare, I tied him fast, and ran lamely for the factory door, still with
frost, and cumbered with my driver's dread-naught.
Immediately I found myself standing in a spacious place, intolerably
lighted by long rows of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene
without.
At rows of blank-looking counters sat rows of blank-looking girls,
white folders in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank paper.
In one corner stood some huge frame of ponderous iron, with a vertical
thing like a piston periodically rising and falling upon a heavy wooden
block. Before it--its tame minister--stood a tall girl, feeding the
iron animal with half-quires of rose-hued note paper, which, at every
downward dab of the piston-like machine, received in the corner the
impress of a wreath of roses. I looked from the rosy paper to the
pallid cheek, but said nothing.
Seated before a long apparatus, strung with long, slender strings like
any harp, another girl was feeding it with foolscap sheets, which, so
soon as they curiously traveled from her on the cords, were withdrawn
at the opposite end of the machine by a second girl. They came to the
first girl blank; they went to the second girl ruled.
I looked upon the first girl's brow, and saw it was young and fair;
I looked upon the the second girl's brow, and saw it was ruled and
wrinkled. Then, as I still looked, the two--for some small variety to
the monotony--changed places; and where had stood the young, fair brow,
now stood the ruled and wrinkled one.
Perched high upon a narrow platform, and still higher upon a high stool
crowning it, sat another figure serving some other iron animal; while
below the platform sat her mate in some sort of reciprocal attendance.
Not a syllable was breathed. Nothing was heard but the low, steady
overruling hum of the iron animals. The human voice was banished
from the spot. Machinery--that vaunted slave of humanity--here stood
menially served by human beings, who served mutely and cringingly as
the slave serves the Sultan. The girls did not so much seem accessory
wheels to the general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.
All this scene around me was instantaneously taken in at one sweeping
glance--even before I had proceeded to unwind the heavy fur tippet from
around my neck. But as soon as this fell from me the dark-complexioned
man, standing close by, raised a sudden cry, and seizing my arm,
dragged me out into the open air, and without pausing for a word
instantly caught up some congealed snow and began rubbing both my
cheeks.
"Two white spots like the whites of your eyes," he said; "man, your
cheeks are frozen."
"That may well be," muttered I; "'tis some wonder the frost of the
Devil's Dungeon strikes in no deeper. Rub away."
Soon a horrible, tearing pain caught at my reviving cheeks. Two gaunt
blood-hounds, one on either side, seemed mumbling them. I seemed
Actaeon.
Presently, when all was over, I re-entered the factory, made known my
business, concluded it satisfactorily, and then begged to be conducted
throughout the place to view it.
- title
- Chunk 4