natural tint of vegetable fibers has a slight yellow cast, and, even if the paper is to be white, a certain amount of dye has to be added to the pulp.

Now the pulp goes to the room where the paper "machines" are. The room is very large, the floors are wet, and steamy vapors rise from the machines. The atmosphere here is warm and moist, whatever the outside weather. The pulp flows through pipes from the engines to the "chest" -- a big high-sided vat with long arms revolving inside to keep the contents stirring.

From this the pulp is pumped up to the machines, which are big and complicated and require most careful adjustment to produce the delicate sheet formation. They are about one hundred feet long and six feet wide. They have a wet end and a dry end. The pulp enters by way of the wet end, where it passes through a screen and flows out on to an endless wire straining cloth. It resembles thin milk, and, indeed, to all appearances is so nearly milk that you doubt the possibility of ever getting such material into solid sheets of paper. All this end of the machine is in quick, lateral motion to distribute the paper fiber evenly.

The wire cloth on which the thin stream of pulp travels along is of a mesh fine enough to permit the water to drain off without losing any of the pulp. After being carried several yards by the easy forward motion of the wire the substance has become a solid broad sheet of paper. It seems a miraculous transformation.

While the sheet is yet in a moist state on the wire cloth it passes beneath a revolving wire-covered cylinder called the dandy roll, which bears on its surface raised letters, and perhaps certain designs. These stamp what is known as the watermark in the paper. You can see it if you hold up a sheet and look through toward the light, but it is not usually apparent otherwise.