MOTHER, again I see you stand
Amid your prattling infant band;
Again, in haste, aside you lay
The book you wished to read to-day:
Your time is given to us alone,
Scarcely a moment seems your own;
Where shall we ever find another
To care for us like you, my mother?

You wisely train each well-loved chilu,
Gently you chide the rash and wild;
You tenderly support the meek,
And give protection to the weak;
I know that we are deemed to be

A fond, united family;

Your influence binds us to each other,We owe our peace to you, my mother.

LITTLE Bessey is learning to sew. She means to make pretty stitches, and no wonder then that she should have some choice in needles. 46 Give me a good needle," says Bessy, "and I will do the best I can." No little girl can do more. Beautiful things are these bright needles. A very good gentleman, who is well known among us, says that

and this is very true. Nothing has ever yet been found to take the place of the one-eyed, bright little needle. What if we should talk a while about its native place-how it is made, and where?

Have the children ever heard of the British Needle Mills, at Redditch? It is a beautiful village, situated in a secluded part of the county of Worcester; and, strange to tell, its inhabitants all live, directly or indirectly, by making needles. Nobody knows why nearly all these bright bits of steel, which find their way to every part of England, and even come over the broad Atlantic to us, nobody scends to know why they are made at Redditch. Even the needle-makers themselves cannot tell who was the first manufacturer, or how long Redditch has been the centre of the manufacture. It has been said, however, that needles were not sold in Cheapside (London) until the reign of Queen Mary. We can imagine potteries in connection with a clay district like North Staffordshire. Of these no doubt the children have heard. Joseph's brethren went to Dothan with their flocks because there was herbage there. Men

make potteries in places like Staffordshire because clay is there. But no reasons like these are given why the green little secluded village of Redditch, away many miles from all factories and manufacturing towns, should make needles for all the ladies in the world. But so it is. Away over by the Malvern hills, where no rail cars, stage coaches or omnibuses ever go-where nobody goes unless they go on purpose · is the village of Redditch. On our way we see women riding to and from Broomsgrove market (six miles distant) on rough looking little horses, with panniers, on either side. Here, too, we see white houses, striped with black lines to make them prettier, while green fields, hills and hedges make the entry to the village of Redditch appear vastly different from either English or American manufacturing towns.

A sudden turn in the road brings us at once to the village, whose red brick houses form a striking contrast to the green fields around. But to our readers a description of the place may be uninteresting. We will try to give them some ideas of the manufacture itself. A curious fact to the children will be this,—that so many different workmen should be employed in making so small a thing as a needle and more curious still, that each department of the labor should be a separate trade. But so it is. The man who anneals does not point ; nor does the pointer make the eyes or polish the needle. Some work in factories, and some at their own houses; but each follows his own trade, and no man makes a whole needle.

The number of needle-makers in Redditch is about three thousand, and in the whole district, six or seven thousand. Many of these are females. In the factories they have different rooms for each part of the manufacture; in some of the rooms only three or four, in others a great many workmen are employed. A writer, who has visited the British Needle Mills at Redditch, informs us that not less than thirty different names are applied to the different processes of needle-making. My young readers know that needles are made of steel, but perhaps they do not know that needle-makers are not wire-drawers.

A coil of wire, when about to be operated on, is carried to the "cutting shop," where it is cut into pieces equal to the length of two of the needles about to be made. Fixed up against the wall of the

shop is a ponderous pair of shears, with the blades uppermost. The workman takes probably a hundred wires at once, grasps them between his hands, rests them against a gauge to determine the length to which they are to be cut, places them between the blades of the shears, and cuts them by pressing with his body or thigh against one of the handles of the shears. The coil is thus reduced to twenty or thirty thousand pieces, each about three inches long; and as each piece had formed a portion of a curve two feet in diameter, it is easy to see that it must necessarily deviate somewhat from the straight line. This straightness must be rigorously given to the wire before

the needle-making is commenced; and the mode by which it is effected is one of the most remarkable in the whole manufacture.

In the first place the wires are annealed. Around the walls of the annealing shop we see a number of iron rings hung up, each from three or four to six or seven inches in diameter, and a quarter or half an inch in thickness. Two of these rings are placed upright on their edges, at a little distance apart; and within them are placed many thousands of wires, which are kept in a group by resting on the interior edges of the two rings. In this state they are placed on a shelf in a small furnace, and there kept till red hot. On being taken out, at glowing heat, they are placed on an iron plate, the wires being horizontal, and the rings in which they are inserted being vertical. The process of "rubbing" (the technical name for the straightening to which we allude) then commences. The workman, as represented on the preceding page, takes a long piece of iron or steel, perhaps an inch in width, and, inserting it between the two rings, rubs the needles backwards and forwards, causing each needle to roll over on its own axis, and also over and under those by which it is surrounded. The noise emitted by this process is just that of filing, but no filing takes place; for the rubber is smooth, and the sound arises from the rolling of one wire against another. The rationale of the process is this:- the action of one wire on another brings them all to a perfectly straight form, because any convexity or curvature in one wire would be pressed out by the close contact of the adjoining ones. The heating of the wires facilitates this process; and the workman knows, by the change of sound, when all the wires have been "rubbed " straight. By the facility of the moving of the rings on the bench, the facility of movement among the wires in the rings, and the peculiar mode in which the workman applies his tools, every individual wire is in turn brought in contact with the rubber.

Our needles have now assumed the form of perfectly straight pieces of wire, say a little more than three inches in length, blunt at both ends, and dulled at the surface by exposure to the fire. Each of these pieces is to make two needles, the two ends constituting the points; and both points are made before the piece of wire is divided into two. The pointing immediately succeeds the rubbing and consists in grinding down each end of the wire till it is perfectly sharp. This is the part of needle-making which has attracted more attention