a couple of days; then it is all over. You couldn't hire them to eat. Every few weeks the different employees are allowed to buy two pounds for themselves at the wholesale price, but you would be surprised to see how few of them do it. If they get it you can be pretty certain that it is to give away, for they'd never eat it themselves." His two listeners stared incredulously. Their guide led them across the room. "So," said he, reverting once more to the kettles and the thermometer, "our candy is not made by guesswork, you see. Sugar costs too much to risk having such a large batch as a kettleful spoiled. We boil it by the thermometer, and when it is at just the right point we take it off and put it into these coolers, where it thickens and is reduced to a workable temperature. That which is to be used as filling is then shifted into these big cylindrical cans that have inside them a series of revolving fingers and here the candy is beaten until quite smooth; whatever flavoring or coloring matter is needed is beaten into it." As the machinery whirled the boys stood watching the beaters. "Some of this beaten sugar will be colored pink, flavored with rose or wintergreen, and used for the centers of chocolate; some will have maple flavoring, some vanilla, some lemon. Nuts will be stirred into some of the rest of it. There is an almost endless number of ways in which it may be varied. Come over here and see them preparing the centers and getting them ready to cover with chocolate." It was an interesting process. Shallow wooden trays filled with dry corn-starch passed beneath a machine which left in them rows of empty holes the size of the heart of a chocolate cream. The trays then moved on until they stopped just under a nozzle, which ran exactly the right amount of liquid filling into each hole. The dryness of the corn-starch prevented the mixture from flowing together. As soon as every hole in the tray was filled with fondant it was set away to cool and an empty tray substituted. When the little centers were hard enough they were taken out of the corn-starch moulds, and after being put upon traveling strips of fine wire netting, melted chocolate was poured over them. The wire frames sped along like miniature moving sidewalks, their contents drying and cooling on the way. In the meantime the superfluous chocolate dripped through the netting into a trough beneath and was collected to be melted over again. On went the finished chocolates until they reached the packing-room, where girls removed them from the frames, sorted them, and put them into boxes.