were strung with cotton warp, and little Kashmiri boys, sitting elbow to elbow before them, tied in the wool threads, cut them with miniature scythes, and pressed down the stitches with wooden combs. A spectacled old Kashmiri, seated behind each curtain of warp-threads, read off the directions for the pattern from pages of Kashmir cipher, all understanding and following this ancient, conventional cipher by inherited association more easily than any of the clear, mechanical directions devised and used by the managers of jail carpet-works. Four small boys, with one old man to read the pattern to them, will make a fine, close, velvet-pile carpet, measuring eleven by thirteen feet, in two months and a half,—a carpet worth twenty-five dollars gold at Amritsar. The design is chosen, the materials allotted, and the contract let to the reader, who pays each boy three or four rupees a month. Conventional old Turkish and Persian designs are followed. They are first drawn in colors, traced on sealed paper, graded to the number of warp-threads, and the pattern written in Kashmir cipher. The small boys work mechanically, tying on two, four, or twenty stitches, as the reader calls to them, paying little heed to what is growing under their fingers, whether scroll, leaf, or stripe. "Two pink, three green, one red," chant the boys in monotones after the reader. The reader watches the pattern grow, and, detecting a false stitch, raps the offender with the stick he holds for the purpose. The carpets are valued both for the fineness of the stitches and the quality of the wool, the ordinary "fine old Persian, or Tabriz,
