In this way, the manufacturer is furnished with perhaps fifty or seventy-five messes of milk, all more or less tainted, or at least progressed in decomposition, whether any offensive odor is perceptible or not. He has these to cool off and keep over night--often with poor facilities for cooling--for proprietors of factories are too often ignorant of the importance of providing ample means for cooling, or are too eager for large profits on small investments, to furnish them. So the operator dips and stirs away at the decomposing mass until ten or eleven o'clock, if not later, and finally yields to "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," to rest his weary muscles and care-worn brain--exhausted, perhaps, by months of incessant toil seven days every week. By five the next morning he must be on hand, to receive the scattering messes of milk. At seven or eight o'clock comes the rush. Then the messes begin to drop off, and by half-past nine or ten o'clock the last steaming batch, with an unmistakable rotten-egg smell, makes its appearance.
Now, what has the cheese-maker got on his hands, some sweltering morning, during the season when it is "too hot to make butter," and people kindly draw their dairy liquids to the cheese-factory? Why, on rising in the morning and rubbing open his eyes, he breaks the cream on his milk. The under surface has a sickish, sour smell, which tells him very plainly that it cannot be worked up too soon. But what is he to do? The answer is plain enough: Run into this fermenting mass an equal quantity of the same hot stuff which he received the night before! What will be its condition by the time he gets through? No matter! It is his business to make cheese of it. He is employed for that purpose. If the cheese does not prove of the first quality, every patron who furnishes him stinking milk will have strong suspicions that he does not understand his business! And some even insist that the cheese-maker shall pay for all the poor cheese! But any man who is fool enough to make such an agreement, ought to suffer, at least one season. The thought of it, however, is almost "enough to make a minister swear." And, by the way, we have been told of one instance where a minister left the pulpit and took to the cheese-factory--probably for the purpose of practically learning a lesson of patience. He was simple-minded enough to agree to pay for all the poor cheese. He soon found his salary was not equal to such a demand. So he set himself about watching the weighing-can, to keep out the bad milk. This was a Herculean task he had not counted on. We are not informed whether he swore or not; but he actually took his station outside, with a heavy rod of iron, which he was compelled to use, on one or two occasions, to keep the patrons from running rotten milk into the weighing-can! His experience was an instructive one, and ought to be a warning to all ambitious clergymen, as well as to innocent-minded cheese-makers!