- end_line
- 4176
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4099
- text
- heat, as if here, true enough, were being finally developed the
germinous particles lately seen.
Before me, rolled out like some long Eastern manuscript, lay stretched
one continuous length of iron framework--multitudinous and mystical,
with all sorts of rollers, wheels, and cylinders, in slowly-measured
and unceasing motion.
"Here first comes the pulp now," said Cupid, pointing to the nighest
end of the machine.
"See; first it pours out and spreads itself upon this wide, sloping
board; and then--look--slides, thin and quivering, beneath the first
roller there. Follow on now, and see it as it slides from under that
to the next cylinder. There; see how it has become just a very little
less pulpy now. One step more, and it grows still more to some slight
consistence. Still another cylinder, and it is so knitted--though as
yet mere dragon-fly wing--that it forms an air-bridge here, like a
suspended cobweb, between two more separated rollers; and flowing over
the last one, and under again, and doubling about there out of sight
for a minute among all those mixed cylinders you indistinctly see, it
reappears here, looking now at last a little less like pulp and more
like paper, but still quite delicate and defective yet awhile. But--a
little further onward, Sir, if you please--here now, at this further
point, it puts on something of a real look, as if it might turn out to
be something you might possibly handle in the end. But it's not yet
done, Sir. Good way to travel yet, and plenty more of cylinders must
roll it."
"Bless my soul!" said I, amazed at the elongation, interminable
convolutions, and deliberate slowness of the machine. "It must take a
long time for the pulp to pass from end to end, and come out paper."
"Oh, not so long," smiled the precocious lad, with a superior and
patronizing air; "only nine minutes. But look; you may try it for
yourself. Have you a bit of paper? Ah! here's a bit on the floor. Now
mark that with any word you please, and let me dab it on here, and
we'll see how long before it comes out at the other end."
"Well, let me see," said I, taking out my pencil. "Come, I'll mark it
with your name."
Bidding me take out my watch, Cupid adroitly dropped the inscribed slip
on an exposed part of the incipient mass.
Instantly my eye marked the second-hand on my dial-plate.
Slowly I followed the slip, inch by inch: sometimes pausing for full
half a minute as it disappeared beneath inscrutable groups of the lower
cylinders, but only gradually to emerge again; and so, on, and on, and
on--inch by inch; now in open sight, sliding along like a freckle on
the quivering sheet; and then again wholly vanished; and so, on, and
on, and on--inch by inch; all the time the main sheet growing more and
more to final firmness--when, suddenly, I saw a sort of paper-fall,
not wholly unlike a water-fall; a scissory sound smote my ear, as of
some cord being snapped; and down dropped an unfolded sheet of perfect
foolscap, with my "Cupid" half faded out of it, and still moist and
warm.
My travels were at an end, for here was the end of the machine.
"Well, how long was it?" said Cupid.
"Nine minutes to a second," replied I, watch in hand.
"I told you so."
For a moment a curious emotion filled me, not wholly unlike that which
one might experience at the fulfillment of some mysterious prophecy.
But how absurd, thought I again; the thing is a mere machine, the
essence of which is unvarying punctuality and precision.
Previously absorbed by the wheels and cylinders, my attention was now
directed to a sad-looking woman standing by.
"That is rather an elderly person so silently tending the machine-end
here. She would not seem wholly used to it either."
- title
- Chunk 7