{"id":"01KG8AKAP2D352HZZK3EV968C2","cid":"bafkreieim66lorsqtm7fp7g7rp3jpascurfvixkeuvliuie42zpd44yjp4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3970,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KG89J1C1N72JCD0ZBGTBX0EX","start_line":3889,"text":"Leading my horse close to the door from which she had come, I knocked.\r\nAnother pale, blue girl appeared, shivering in the doorway as, to\r\nprevent the blast, she jealously held the door ajar.\r\n\r\n\"Nay, I mistake again. In God's name shut the door. But hold, is there\r\nno man about?\"\r\n\r\nThat moment a dark-complexioned well-wrapped personage passed, making\r\nfor the factory door, and spying him coming, the girl rapidly closed\r\nthe other one.\r\n\r\n\"Is there no horse-shed here, Sir?\"\r\n\r\n\"Yonder, the wood-shed,\" he replied, and disappeared inside the factory.\r\n\r\nWith much ado I managed to wedge in horse and pung between scattered\r\npiles of wood all sawn and split. Then, blanketing my horse, and piling\r\nmy buffalo on the blanket's top, and tucking in its edges well around\r\nthe breastband and breeching, so that the wind might not strip him\r\nbare, I tied him fast, and ran lamely for the factory door, still with\r\nfrost, and cumbered with my driver's dread-naught.\r\n\r\nImmediately I found myself standing in a spacious place, intolerably\r\nlighted by long rows of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene\r\nwithout.\r\n\r\nAt rows of blank-looking counters sat rows of blank-looking girls,\r\nwhite folders in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank paper.\r\n\r\nIn one corner stood some huge frame of ponderous iron, with a vertical\r\nthing like a piston periodically rising and falling upon a heavy wooden\r\nblock. Before it--its tame minister--stood a tall girl, feeding the\r\niron animal with half-quires of rose-hued note paper, which, at every\r\ndownward dab of the piston-like machine, received in the corner the\r\nimpress of a wreath of roses. I looked from the rosy paper to the\r\npallid cheek, but said nothing.\r\n\r\nSeated before a long apparatus, strung with long, slender strings like\r\nany harp, another girl was feeding it with foolscap sheets, which, so\r\nsoon as they curiously traveled from her on the cords, were withdrawn\r\nat the opposite end of the machine by a second girl. They came to the\r\nfirst girl blank; they went to the second girl ruled.\r\n\r\nI looked upon the first girl's brow, and saw it was young and fair;\r\nI looked upon the the second girl's brow, and saw it was ruled and\r\nwrinkled. Then, as I still looked, the two--for some small variety to\r\nthe monotony--changed places; and where had stood the young, fair brow,\r\nnow stood the ruled and wrinkled one.\r\n\r\nPerched high upon a narrow platform, and still higher upon a high stool\r\ncrowning it, sat another figure serving some other iron animal; while\r\nbelow the platform sat her mate in some sort of reciprocal attendance.\r\n\r\nNot a syllable was breathed. Nothing was heard but the low, steady\r\noverruling hum of the iron animals. The human voice was banished\r\nfrom the spot. Machinery--that vaunted slave of humanity--here stood\r\nmenially served by human beings, who served mutely and cringingly as\r\nthe slave serves the Sultan. The girls did not so much seem accessory\r\nwheels to the general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.\r\n\r\nAll this scene around me was instantaneously taken in at one sweeping\r\nglance--even before I had proceeded to unwind the heavy fur tippet from\r\naround my neck. But as soon as this fell from me the dark-complexioned\r\nman, standing close by, raised a sudden cry, and seizing my arm,\r\ndragged me out into the open air, and without pausing for a word\r\ninstantly caught up some congealed snow and began rubbing both my\r\ncheeks.\r\n\r\n\"Two white spots like the whites of your eyes,\" he said; \"man, your\r\ncheeks are frozen.\"\r\n\r\n\"That may well be,\" muttered I; \"'tis some wonder the frost of the\r\nDevil's Dungeon strikes in no deeper. Rub away.\"\r\n\r\nSoon a horrible, tearing pain caught at my reviving cheeks. Two gaunt\r\nblood-hounds, one on either side, seemed mumbling them. I seemed\r\nActaeon.\r\n\r\nPresently, when all was over, I re-entered the factory, made known my\r\nbusiness, concluded it satisfactorily, and then begged to be conducted\r\nthroughout the place to view it.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJJQ5MZMSVT99EFZXNZ7","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1C1N72JCD0ZBGTBX0EX","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKAP0MWH2685AFE03GCD0","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKAP29KJRVZPBXCHF74AF","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:00.706Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:08.279Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}