of one per minute. Then they are cased and, lastly, placed in shallow trays, holding each about three hundred watches, for testing. The trays are supported upon pivots, and can be swung into any position between the vertical and horizontal. The watches remain first upright, then at an angle of 45° and, finally, upside down; for a space of six days altogether, going all the time. Those which stop, or fail to keep time, are sent back to the "assembly-room," while those which pass muster are boxed and despatched to the native and foreign markets.

This factory cost, as we have seen, about half a million of dollars, employs three hundred hands and turns out six hundred watches a day. These sell for two dollars forty-three cents a piece, and if any one should ask Mr. Lock, "Why not for an even two-fifty?" he might perhaps answer, as once before, to such an inquirer, "Don't you know? Three cents is the cost of the watch, the profit is an even two-forty."

A few moments before six o'clock, we stationed ourselves at the factory door to watch the issuing operatives. Of these, the greater number are girls, but, girl or man, almost every one had a smile and a nod for the manager, a smile and nod which were charming because of their eloquence as to the relations between employer and employed. Of one, Mr. Lock would say, "He is our librarian ;" of another, "He teaches in my Sunday school; of this girl, "She is the

best singer in our church choir;" of that, "She is my wife's right hand at a bee." If there is military discipline inside the works, there is both friendship and equality between employer and employed without its walls. When Jack is really as good as his master, the old proverb has no sting.

CHAPTER IV

WINSTED A TEMPERANCE TOWN.

THE Naugatuck valley heads about thirty miles north of Waterbury and as our train threads its rocky bed, sweeps around its frequent curves and enters its open bottoms, or "intervales," as they are here called, we find the last almost always occupied by industrial towns. These are seldom more than three or four miles apart, are all Ansonias or Waterburys in appearance, full of brass-mills, clock-shops, pin factories and similar establishments.

Arrived within ten miles of the river's source, where it is no longer able to turn a mill-wheel, the railway leaves the stream and, crossing a low divide, reaches, within a few miles, another mountain stream, called the Mad River. This is a small but turbulent tributary of the Farmington, a river of considerable industrial importance, which drives a thousand wheels in its long, tortuous course through hills that turn it, now north, now south, on its way to join the Con

necticut river. The Mad River valley is the double of the Naugatuck, excavated in the same primitive rocks and bordered by similar deposits of glacial detritus. These have been stratified by the action of water, and are conspicuous by their arrangement into flanking terraces, upon whose level, continuous surfaces the railways of these New England glens seek their remotest water powers, as if by ready-made roads.

The woods on either side of the valley began to show signs of the coming spring. Although the birches and chestnuts were still quite bare, the half-unfolded leaves of some early maples patched the dark hemlocks with crimson, while the bloom of an occasional dogwood shone like a snowball against groves of evergreen pine. The river brawled loudly over its steep rocky bed and the air grew keen as we rose from the lower valley towns to a level of about seven hundred feet above the sea.

Here lies Winsted, a half-agricultural, half-mechanical town, of six thousand souls, jammed in a rocky. glen, which is only just wide enough to accommodate its main street. This curves around a wide bend in the noisy stream, beside which it straggles for a long way, a broken line of churches, factories, stores and private houses. Cross streets branch from it irregularly, ascending lateral valleys which lose themselves in grassy uplands and spread the dwellings of a few thousand people over the area of a little city.

They have an odd way in Connecticut of giving

compound names to such new places as grow up from time to time between two or more existing townships in the State. Winsted is a case in point. It lies on the borders of Winchester and Berkhampstead, and has therefore been called Winsted. Waterbury itself is a compound of Watertown and Middlebury, Torringford of Torrington and Hartford, and Wintonbury of Windsor Farmington and Simsbury. The custom is fruitful of names having a sound which is English in character without being familiar to the ear.

A halcyon sabbath, with a turquoise sky and heavenly air, seemed just the day for a clean pair of boots. Accordingly, we struggled for a time before breakfast with the shoe brushes, which invite travellers to help themselves in the "wash-room" of every rural hotel in New England. After a third-rate performance on these unaccustomed instruments, we sought the morning meal, consisting of Connecticut shad and Indian pudding. Connecticut shad has more bones than any other fish in the world. It is said, indeed, that an ingenious Connecticut man once constructed an automatic machine, which, upon turning a handle, delivered one stream of fish into the mouth, and another of bones behind the back. Everything went well with the inventor on a first trial and might have so continued but for an unfortunate accident. The machine was new, the motion unaccustomed and, in his anxiety to take note of certain imperfect details, the schemer forgot which way the