a rod and deposited them on the moulding bench. No wonder, we thought, that the colour in her checks was an unhealthy flush. With a mass of cold clay held against her stomach, and bending under another on her head, for ten or twelve hours in a day, it seemed a marvel that there could be any red blood in her veins at all. How such a child could ever grow an inch in any direction after being put to this occupation, was another mystery. Certainly not an inch could be added to her stature in all the working days of her life. She could only grow at night and on Sundays.
Each moulding woman has two, sometimes three, of these girls to serve her, one to bring the clay, the other to carry away the bricks when formed. What may be just, but equally unfortunate, they are generally her own children if she has any of suitable size and strength; but, for lack of such, she employs the children of equally unfortunate mothers. Whether in cruel or good-natured satire, they are called pages, as if waiting upon a queen. And she, perhaps, is the most directly aimed at in this witticism. Some irreverent wag, looking at her standing by her four-legged throne, with her broad wooden sceptre in her hand, and her yellow turban on her head, might call her the Sultana of Edom, or the queen of red clay, and not travel far from
