hearts, although they tried to keep cheerful faces; but at last he grew well enough to take his place again in the study, and to work a little on his novel.

Mrs. Armstrong was a fragile little woman, with too much sentiment for the comfort of her friends, and with the certainty that her son was the only really great American novelist. She was so fond of him that she was jealous of any other influence, and was morally certain that she could be his amanuensis quite as satisfactorily as his new friend. She had overpowered Frances by her gratitude and affection as long as Richard's life hung in the balance; but as soon as he was well on the way to recovery, she dismissed her in a somewhat cavalier fashion.

Richard had inherited his nervous temperament from his mother, and under the joint management of the mother and son the book remained at a standstill, and Mrs. Armstrong was at last forced reluctantly to admit that it might be best to send for the "type-writer," as otherwise the public would have to wait indefinitely for the completion of "the most glorious American novel." Frances Grey therefore was at last summoned, and she came at once, with no apparent feeling of ill-will, and took her place as quietly in the corner of the study as if she had never left it. She found Richard sitting in the large easychair, "himself again," although a little pale and thin.

"How good it is to get you back again!" he said, with one of his bright smiles. "I have missed you more than you would believe possible."

He watched her every motion with the same deep satisfaction with which a little boy bends his gaze on his good mamma who has chanced to be absent for a time. What attractive ways she had, and what a charming face! She was a woman whom any man might be proud to call his mother, or his sister; for she would be ideal in either relation. Only a very exceptional man would fall in love with her, Richard thought; for his sex in general were captivated by external charm, or a lively, fascinating manner. To love this woman, one must be on the farther side of an experience which had shown one the deceitfulness of mere personal charm. Richard felt himself to be the one uncommon man who appreciated her.

a somewhat dry part of the story, or at least a portion which depended for its interest on delicacy of touch rather than startling incident. The hero, Miles Grecourt, had come to a critical point in his experiment in charity. He had set up a small ragamuffin in the trade of bootblacking, notwithstanding the urchin's frequently expressed preference for another way of life, and he was now being rewarded by ingratitude.

66 6

"You're an old humbug,' said the quasibootblack," Richard dictated, goin' around the world thinkin' to do folkses such a pile of good by makin' 'em happy in your way rather than their own. Now, as I told you, I've always had the dream of bein' a newspaper boy, but you insisted upon my bein' a bootblack.' Richard paused to give Miss Grey time to finish this sentence." It is of no use," he went on; "I love you in spite of everything. I may say to myself that it is only that I am dependent on you, but I cheat myself with words; I love you, I love you!"

Miss Grey's fingers flew rapidly over the keys, but she said, "Do you think that last sentence in character?"

"In character!" Richard repeated, savagely; "and pray why is it not in character?"

"Because I do not see why the bootblack changed his mind so suddenly."

"The bootblack! Hang the bootblack!" Richard exclaimed. "I am talking of myself and of you."

"And I am waiting for you to dictate the next paragraph," Frances said, in an icy tone. Her hands were on the keyboard of the type-writer. Richard seized the one that was nearest him.

"Look here, Miss Grey," he said, “will you listen quietly to what I have to say, and let that confounded machine alone?"

"Yes, Mr. Armstrong, if you, on your side, will remember that I am only a typewriter.'"

His very words, but how could she have heard them? He must have said them in his delirium.

"Miss Grey," he went on, with a little break in his voice, "whatever I may have said when I was not myself, the fact remains that I love you; I have had dreary days without you; I cannot tell—”

CHE rise of cotton manufacturing in this country, like that of the other great industries, was effected only after a long series of experiments. For this reason no one town can claim the distinction of having been its birthplace. The new industrial spirit was beginning to make itself felt everywhere at the close of the last century. But the fields were new and untried, and much of the work, so far as concerned the immediate effort itself, was fruitless. Beverly, Massachusetts, however, may be said to have been the seat of the the first cotton factory in America. There it was that cotton spinning, further than the hand-card and one - thread wheel, was carried through its first struggles. Taking that, then, as the starting-point, the rise of the industry in New England may be roughly divided into three periods. The first embraces the dozen years prior to 1790, and might be called the experimental period; the second covers the time from 1790 to 1814, during which the perpetual spinning system was established and perfected; and the third the years immediately following 1814, which marked the introduction of the power-loom and the development of the modern factory.

To Massachusetts belongs the credit of having been the first to give aid and encouragement to the cotton industry. Philadelphia, however, was the original centre of the manufacturing movement in this country. Tench Coxe, a prominent resident of that city, was the pioneer, and so untiring was he in his labors that he earned for himself the title of "Father of American Manufactures." It was he who first urged the cultivation of cotton in the South, at a time when the plant was scarcely seen outside of a flower garden, and who was most

active in the organization of a company for its manufacture. Through him, also, it was that the first spinning-jenny seen in America was exhibited at Philadelphia, in 1775. The jenny was constructed by one Christopher Tully, after the English plan of Hargreaves, and spun twenty-four threads. The "United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures" secured the machine and prepared to operate it. This company, as its name implies, had been formed through the instrumentality of Mr. Coxe, for the purpose of encouraging home industries and giving employment to idle workmen. But it proved a business as well as philanthropic success. Besides operating Tully's jenny, some four

Tench Coxe.

hundred women were employed by it in hand spinning and weaving. The stock, which had been originally fixed at £10, rose in two years to £17 6s 6d. Later the business passed into the hands of

Samuel Wetherell, one of the directors, and he during the Revolution turned from the spinning of cotton to the more profitable making of woollen fabrics. Tully's machine was a rude and unsatis

Moses Brown.

1786 some brass models prepared for Mr. Coxe were seized by the English customs officials. But relief came from another quarter. Hugh Orr, Esquire, of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, had in his employ two Scotch

factory affair. Those who sought to improve it, however, had to contend against the greatest obstacles. Arkwright's patent was giving a decided impetus to the industry in England. But that country guarded the invention jealously and forbade every exportation of models; and the law was strictly enforced. A German in 1784 was fined £500 for trying to form a colony of English workmen for the Low Countries; and in

men, Robert and Alexander Barr, who were familiar with the English spinning system. Orr himself was something of an inventor. He manufactured the first muskets in this country and the first machine-made nails. The Barrs suggested their ability to reproduce these machines, and Orr had them build three, for carding, roving, and spinning. But Orr was public-spirited as well as progressive, and when the machines were completed he had a committee from the state legislature out to Bridgewater to examine them. The result was that the legislature, on November 16, 1786, made a grant of £200 to the machinists, and afterwards supplemented it by six tickets in a state land lottery, in which there were no blanks. This bounty was given, so the grant declared, "as a reward for their ingenuity in forming those machines and their public spirit in making them known to the commonwealth." This was probably the first stock-card in the country. A year later, Thomas Somers, an English midshipman, drifted to Bridgewater, and at Orr's direction constructed an imperfect form of Arkwright's waterframe. The general court made him a grant of £20. These machines were then placed in charge of Mr. Orr and were exhibited by him as the state's model.

Many visited Bridgewater and examined. these models. The immediate results were experiments in spinning at Providence, Rhode Island, and Beverly and Worcester, Massachusetts. Daniel Anthony was the one who secured the plans for Providence. He, with Andrew Dexter and Lewis Peck, had started a company in that city for the making of "homespun cloth," a stuff of linen warp and

cotton filling. But the new venture proved unsuccessful and the machines passed into the hands of Almy & Brown, to be pronounced utterly worthless a few years later by Samuel Slater.

It was at Beverly that the first real advance was made. The Beverly Company was formed in 1787, and built a small brick factory on Bass River. The machinery consisted of one or more spinningjennies and a carding machine. John Cabot and Joshua Fisher were the managers of the enterprise. General Washington, in the diary of his trip through New England in 1789, thus writes of a visit to it:

In this manufactory, they have the new invented spinning and carding machines. One of the first supplies the warp, and four of the latter, one of which spins eighty-four threads at a time by one person. The cotton is prepared for these machines by being first (lightly) drawn to a thread on the common wheel. There

The proprietors of the Beverly Cotton Manufactory beg leave to represent, that the establishment of a manufacture of cotton, in imitation of the most useful and improved stuffs which are formed of that material in Europe, and thence continually imported into this country at a very great expense, has been attempted by the said proprietors. This attempt commenced in the year 1787, from a consideration of the extensive public advantages to be obtained by it; and on this occasion your petitioners may be permitted to declare that in that view of the subject, the hazard of their private property,

is also another machine for doubling and twisting the threads for particular cloths; this also does many at a time. For winding the cotton from the spindles and preparing it for the warp, there is a reel which expedites the work greatly. A number of looms (fifteen or sixteen) were at work with spring shuttles, which do more than double work. In short, the whole seemed perfect and the cotton stuffs which they turn out excellent of their kind; warp and filling both cotton.

and the many obstacles which have since deprived them of every hope of present emolument to themselves were overlooked. The design has been prosecuted, although it has proved much more arduous and expensive than was first conceived, so far as to demonstrate that it is practicable; and that the manufacture, having been once established, will be sufficiently lucrative to support and extend itself, and will afford not only a supply for domestic consumption, but a staple for exportation.