emerges from the chaotic mass produced by heating the scalp, until it
reaches the assembling-room, where the various parts of the musket are
put together. As you enter the boring and turning rooms, you are struck
with surprise at observing hundreds of workmen standing with
musket-barrels in their hands, one end held up to their eyes, and the
other pointing to some one of the innumerable windows of the apartment.
Watching them a few moments, however, you will observe, that, after
looking through the barrel for half a minute, and turning it around in
their fingers, they lay it down upon a small anvil standing at their
side, and strike upon it a gentle blow with a hammer, and then raise it
again to the eye. This is the process of straightening.

In former times, a very slender line, a hair or some similar substance,
was passed through the barrel. This line was then drawn tight, and the
workman, looking through, turned the barrel round so as to bring the
line into coincidence successively with every portion of the inner
surface. If there existed any concavity in any part of this surface, the
line would show it by the distance which would there appear between the
line itself and its reflection in the metal. This method has not,
however, been in use for over thirty years. It gave place to a system
which, with slight modification, is still in practice. This method
consisted in placing a small mirror upon the floor near the anvil of the
straightener, which reflected a diagonal line drawn across a pane of
glass in a window. The workman then placed the barrel of the musket upon
a rest in such a position that the reflected line in the mirror could be
again reflected, through the bore of the barrel, to his eye,--the inner
surface of the barrel being in a brilliantly polished condition from the
boring. When the barrel is placed at the proper angle, which practice
enables the person performing this duty to accomplish at once, there are
two parallel shadows thrown upon opposite sides of the inner surface,