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- 4052
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- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
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- "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.
"Cupid is the boy for that," said the dark-complexioned man.
"Cupid!" and by this odd fancy-name calling a dimpled, red-cheeked,
spirited-looking, forward little fellow, who was rather impudently, I
thought, gliding about among the passive-looking girls--like a gold
fish through hueless waves--yet doing nothing in particular that I
could see, the man bade him lead the stranger through the edifice.
"Come first and see the water-wheel," said this lively lad, with the
air of boyishly-brisk importance.
Quitting the folding-room, we crossed some damp, cold boards, and
stood beneath a great wet shed, incessantly showered with foam,
like the green barnacled bow of some East Indiaman in a gale. Round
and round here went the enormous revolutions of the dark colossal
water-wheel, grim with its one immutable purpose.
"This sets our whole machinery a-going, Sir; in every part of all these
buildings; where the girls work and all."
I looked, and saw that the turbid waters of Blood River had not changed
their hue by coming under the use of man.
"You make only blank paper; no printing of any sort, I suppose? All
blank paper, don't you?"
"Certainly; what else should a paper-factory make?"
The lad here looked at me as if suspicious of my common-sense.
"Oh, to be sure!" said I, confused and stammering; "it only struck me
as so strange that red waters should turn out pale chee--paper, I mean."
He took me up a wet and rickety stair to a great light room, furnished
with no visible thing but rude, manger-like receptacles running
all round its sides; and up to these mangers, like so many mares
haltered to the rack stood rows of girls. Before each was vertically
thrust up a long, glittering scythe, immovably fixed at bottom to
the manger-edge. The curve of the scythe, and its having no snath to
it, made it look exactly like a sword. To and fro, across the sharp
edge, the girls forever dragged long strips of rags, washed white,
picked from baskets at one side; thus ripping asunder every seam, and
converting the tatters almost into lint. The air swam with the fine,
poisonous particles, which from all sides darted, subtilely, as motes
in sunbeams, into the lungs.
"This is the rag-room," coughed the boy.
"You find it rather stifling here," coughed I, in answer; "but the
girls don't cough."
"Oh, they are used to it."
"Where do you get such hosts of rags?" picking up a handful from a
basket.
"Some from the country round about; some from far over sea--Leghorn and
London."
"'Tis not unlikely, then," murmured I, "that among these heaps of rags
there may be some old shirts, gathered from the dormitories of the
Paradise of Bachelors. But the buttons are all dropped off. Pray, my
lad, do you ever find any bachelor's buttons hereabouts?"
"None grow in this part of the country. The Devil's Dungeon is no place
for flowers."
"Oh! you mean the _flowers_ so called--the Bachelor's Buttons?"
"And was not that what you asked about? Or did you mean the gold
bosom-buttons of our boss, Old Bach, as our whispering girls all call
him?"
"The man, then, I saw below is a bachelor, is he?"
"Oh, yes, he's a Bach."
"The edges of those swords, they are turned outward from the girls, if
I see right; but their rags and fingers fly so, I can not distinctly
see."
"Turned outward."
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- Chunk 5