Chapter 9. Mr. Daggett

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_ CHAPTER IX. MR. DAGGETT

The printing press, too, was now a success. What time Bobby could spare, he spent over his new work. In fact he would probably have printed out all his interest in the shape of cards for friends and relatives, did not an incident spur his failing enthusiasm. The little tin box of printer's ink went empty. Bobby tried to buy more at Smith's where other kinds of ink were to be had. Mr. Smith had none.

"You'd better go over to Mr. Daggett's," he advised. "He'll let you have some."

Bobby crossed the street, climbed a stairway slanting outside a square wooden store building and for the first time found himself in a printing office.

Tall stands held tier after tier of type-cases, slid in like drawers. The tops were slanted. On them stood other cases, their queerly arranged and various-sized compartments exposed to view. Down the centre of the room ran a long table. One end of it was heaped with printed matter in piles and in packages, the other was topped with smooth stone on which rested forms made up. Shelves filled with stationery, cans and the like ran down one side the room. Beyond the table were two presses, a big and a little. In one corner stood a table with a gas jet over it. In another was an open sink with running water. A thin man in dirty shirt-sleeves was setting type from one of the cases. Another, shorter man at the stone-topped table was tapping lightly with a mallet on a piece of wood which he moved here and there over a form. A boy of fifteen was printing at the smaller of the presses. A huge figure was sprawled over the table in the corner. In the air hung the delicious smell of printer's ink and the clank and chug of the press.

Bobby stood in the doorway some time. Finally the boy said something to the man at the table. The latter looked up, then arose and came forward.

He was of immense frame, but gaunt and caved-in from much stooping and a consumptive tendency. His massive bony shoulders hung forward; his head was carried in advance. In character this head was like that of a Jove condemned through centuries to long hours in a dark, unwholesome atmosphere--the grand, square, bony structure, the thick, upstanding hair, the bushy, steady eyebrows, the heavy beard. But the cheeks beneath the beard were sunken; the eyes in the square-cut caverns were kind and gentle--and very weary.

"I want to see if I can get some ink of you," requested Bobby, holding out his little tin box.

Mr. Daggett took the box without replying; and, opening it, tested with his finger the quality and colour of what it had contained.

"I guess so," said he.

He led the way to one of the shelves and opened a can as big as a bucket. Bobby gasped.

"My!" he cried; "will you ever use all that?"

Mr. Daggett nodded, and, dipping a broad-bladed knife, brought up, on merely its point, enough to fill Bobby's tin box.

"How much is it?" asked Bobby.

"Let's see, you're Jack Orde's little boy, aren't you?" asked Daggett.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that's all right, then. It's nothing."

"Oh, thank you!" cried Bobby, overwhelmed. The man nodded his massive head. "Please," ventured Bobby, hesitating, "please, would you mind if I stay a little while and watch?"

"'Course not," assured Mr. Daggett. "Stay as long as you want."

He returned to his table and forgot the little boy. An hour later he looked up. Bobby was still there standing in the middle of the floor, staring with all his might. Mr. Daggett pulled together his great frame and arose.

"Have you a printing press?" he asked Bobby.

"Yes, sir," replied Bobby--"it's only a little one--to print two lines," he added.

"Do you like printing?"

"Oh!" burst out Bobby enthusiastically, "it's more fun than anything!"

"I'd like to see some of your work," said Mr. Daggett a flash of amusement flickering in his deep eyes.

Bobby felt in his pocket and gravely presented a card.

"Mr. Robert Orde.
Job Printer."

"Why," said Mr. Daggett, surprised, "this is pretty well done. I didn't know you could make ready so well on those little presses."

"What's 'make ready'?" asked Bobby.

"Why, regulating the impression so that all the letters are printed evenly."

"They didn't for a long time," sighed Bobby. "I had lots of trouble."

"How did you make it go?" asked Mr. Daggett, interested.

Bobby explained the pasting of the slips of paper.

"Who taught you that?" asked Mr. Daggett sharply.

"Nobody; I just thought of it."

Two hours later, when the noon whistles blew, Bobby said good-bye to his friend after a most interesting morning. Mr. Daggett had showed him everything. He explained how in the type-cases the capital letters occupied little compartments all alike and at the top, but how the small letters were arranged arbitrarily in various-sized compartments.

"You see," said he, "we use the _e_ oftenest, so that is the largest and is right in the middle. And here is the _a_ near it, but a little smaller. A man has to learn where they are."

Then they watched the compositor setting type in the metal "stick" with the sliding end. The compositor showed Bobby how he could tell when the letters were right side up by feeling the nicks in the type, without the necessity of looking; how he used the leads to space between the lines. His hands flew from one compartment of the type case to the other and the type clicked sharply. In a moment the stick was full. All three walked over to the "composing table" of stone. Here Bobby watched the type placed in the huge iron frame, which was then filled in with the wooden blocks. The wedge-shaped irons locked it. Finally the block and mallet went over the whole surface to even it down.

Bobby saw proof taken. He watched the small press in operation. It was worked by a foot lever. The round ink plate which automatically made a quarter turn at each impression and the double automatic ink-rollers were a revelation to him. All the boy had to do was to insert and withdraw the paper and push down with his foot. And the pressure was so exact and so delicate and so brief--as though the type and the platen coquetted without actually touching; and the imprint was so true and clear! Even on the thin paper, the shape of the type did not stamp through!

He could have watched for an hour, but shortly the job was finished, so he moved on to look at the coloured inks and the fascinating variety of papers and cards and envelopes.

This latter occupation kept him busy for a long time. He had not realized that so many shapes and kinds of letters could exist. Mr. Daggett told him their names and sizes--nonpareil, brevier, agate, pica, minion and a dozen others which Bobby could not remember but which he found exotic and attractive. Especially was he interested in the poster type, made of wood. One letter was bigger than the whole form of his little press.

When he left, Mr. Daggett gave him a small heavy package.

"Here you are," said he. "Here's an old font of script. It's old and too worn for my use, but you can fool with it."

Bobby was delighted. He could hardly wait to get home before undoing the package. The font formed a compact quadrilateral wound around the edges with string. The letters were all arranged in order--four capital A's--A A A A--then the Bs, and so on. It differed from his own font. The one that came with his press had just three of each letter--large or small. This varied. For instance, there were twenty _s_s, and only two _q_s. Bobby procured his tweezers and began to set up his own name. He had no stick so he got out the form with the two narrow wooden groves. To his dismay the type would not fit. They were at least a quarter inch longer than his own.

"Why so solemn, Bobby?" enquired his father at lunch a few minutes later. "What's wrong?"

"My printing press isn't a real one," broke out Bobby. "It's a _toy_ one! I don't _like_ toys!"

"Oh, ho!" cried Mr. Orde. "Don't like toys, eh! How about the engine and cars, and the tin soldiers?"

"I don't like them any more, either," insisted Bobby stoutly.

"All right," suggested Mr. Orde, winking at his wife. "Of course then you won't want them any more: I'll just give them away to some other little boy."

"All right," assented Bobby with genuine and astonishing indifference.

Bobby laid the little press away, but he could not resist the fascination of Mr. Daggett's printing office. One day he came from it bearing an inky and much-thumbed catalogue. He fairly learned it by heart--not only the machines, from the tiny card press to the beautiful fifty-dollar self-inker beyond which his ambition did not stray, but also all the little accessories of the trade--the mallet, the patent quoins, the sticks, the type-cases, the composing stones, the roller moulds and compositions, the patent gauge-pins, the lead-cutters, the slugs. And page after page he ran over the type in all its sizes and in all its modifications of form. These things fascinated him and held him with a longing for them, like revolvers and razors and carpenter's chisels and peavies and all other business-like tools of a trade. Their very shapes were the most appropriate and romantic shapes they could possibly have assumed. He made lists. At first they were elaborate, and included the big foot press and four fonts of type and three colours of ink and fixings innumerable. They then shrank modestly by gradations until they stuck at the 5x7 form. Bobby would not have cared for a press smaller than that, for he wanted to print real things, like bill-heads and whist cards and perhaps a small newspaper. His little heart throbbed with a complete enthusiasm.

"When I grow up I think I'd like to be a printer like Mr. Daggett," he said wistfully.

"Oh, no, you wouldn't," said Mr. Orde. "It's a poor trade--no money in it here--and you'd have to stay in the house all the time. You wouldn't want to be a printer, Bobby."

"Yes I would," repeated Bobby positively. _

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