This page has been validated.

x

the acquirement. Common apprentices to soap-makers, acquire their knowledge from ocular demonstration only: they see how to prepare the materials, mix them together, set a cave, draw off and collect the leys therefrom, boil the same with tallow in the soap-pan:—the event ultimately is the production of soap.

They may also be instructed, under the eye of their master, or the boiler, occasionally, to finish a soap-pan. This last indulgence naturally creates in the apprentice, perhaps nearly out of his time, an impressive idea of his own finishing, or completion in the art of his trade. How wonderfully mistaken, however, many such have found themselves, when afterwards entrusted with