"Compositor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was twelve years old by that time, and was already a swift compositor, though he was still so small that he had to stand on a chair to reach the case in setting type on Taylor's inaugural message. But what he lacked in stature he made up in gravity of demeanor; and he got the name of "The Old Man" ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... entered on the second stage of his training under the same rough tutelage. At the age of thirteen he entered the office of the Newburyport Herald to learn to set types. At last his boy's hands had found work which his boy's heart did joy to have done. He soon mastered the compositor's art, became a remarkably rapid composer. As he set up the thoughts of others, he was not slow in discovering thoughts of his own demanding utterance. The printer's apprentice felt the stirrings of a new life. A passion for self-improvement took possession ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... may fairly be supposed to have chosen for melodic reasons. His exhaustive discussion of the spelling of the original editions seems, however, to be the less called-for as he himself appears to admit that the compositor, not the author, was supreme in these matters, and that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases to the thousand Milton had no system, but spelt by immediate inspiration. Yet Mr. Masson fills nearly four pages with an analysis of the vowel sounds, in which, as if to demonstrate ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... letters and telegrams and written accounts of various things that have taken place in different parts of the world have been coming in to this building. When they come in the editor looks at them and sends them up to the chief compositor. The "compositors," up in the top rooms where the lights are shining, stand before large wooden trays or "cases," each of which is divided into a number of small squares, like boxes without lids. These boxes hold what ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... compounds are fully analyzed and tabulated. The best modern usage in the matter of the employment of the hyphen is set forth in a series of rules. The whole is concluded by practical advice to the compositor as to the use of the rules in the ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... larger in size than those of the Examiner, and with about as much matter as is contained in two pages of the English journal. The type is delightfully large, and the spaces between the lines are really pleasant to look at; next to a Roman editor, the position of a Roman compositor must be one of the easiest berths in the newspaper-world. Things are taken very easily here, and the Giornale never appears till six o'clock at night, so that writers and printers can take their pleasure and be in bed betimes. There ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... worked off his surplus stock of horse-play on his associates, he would vent it upon the compositor in some such apostrophe ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... also Hanmer's reading, certainly makes sense. Pope read returns. The old copies have retires. I believe Shakspeare wrote "Rechides to chiding fortune." This puzzled the compositor, who gave the nearest common word without ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... he is impressed, for the soul of the true book-collector is ever in communion with the manes of those who gave birth to his books. He is brother to author, paper-maker, compositor, publisher, and binder, understanding all their hopes, doubts, and fears, in sympathy with all the thoughts that gave his volumes their shape, size, and appearance. Have you not often realised, brother collector, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... substitute a machine for the skilled hands that set the type from which a book or magazine is printed. Inventors have worked at this problem, and a number have solved it in various ways. To one who has seen the slow work of hand typesetting as the compositor builds up a long column of metal piece by piece, letter by letter, picking up each character from its allotted space in the case and placing it in its proper order and position, and then realises that much of the printed matter he sees is so produced, the wonder is how the enormous amount of ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... that the editorial work of many writers is done late at night, after protracted hours of labor in other fields; and notwithstanding that where a journalist is able to give his entire time to the business, he is often sole solicitor, clerk, compositor, pressman, collector, office boy, and editorial staff combined—despite all these disadvantages, the beneficent effect of the Negro press is felt all over the land. The dozens of able men and women who are engaged in this noble work, most of them ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... author knows that there is a beast of burden, the worker, to whom, for the sum of a few shillings a day, he can entrust the printing of his books; but he hardly cares to know what a printing office is like. If the compositor suffers from lead-poisoning, and if the child who sees to the machine dies of anaemia, are there not other ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... "typographer" is used to differentiate between the compositor and the printer, the latter being the one who does ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... of italics is so important that in many cases the compositor is justified in ignoring markings for italic in his copy where they are too profuse. The author is often surprised and disappointed at the appearance of his proof when it comes back heavily italicized. Moreover the occurrence of ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... compositor brought me a proof-slip of which nearly the whole was taken up with a gigantic display head. It was the first report of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing—afterward called Shiloh, you know, and it gave the number of killed and wounded as ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... word of one sentence and making it the first word of another, the intelligent compositor belittles a night fight for which I thought my command deserved no inconsiderable credit. I regret now that I did not take the time to make an elaborate report of the operations of my brigade, describing all ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... the squall of the Terror had passed over, Nicolas Sechard was obliged to look out for another jack-of-all-trades to be compositor, reader, and foreman in one; and an Abbe who declined the oath succeeded the Comte de Maucombe as soon as the First Consul restored public worship. The Abbe became a Bishop at the Restoration, and in after days ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... point, etc.; press room, press work; reglet[obs3], roman; running head, running title; scale, serif, shank, sheet work, shoulder, signature, slug, underlay. folio &c. (book) 593; copy, impression, pull, proof, revise; author's proof, galley proof, press proof; press revise. printer, compositor, reader; printer's devil copyholder. V. print; compose; put to press, go to press; pass through the press, see through the press; publish &c. 531; bring out; appear in print, rush into print; distribute, makeup, mortise, offset, overrun, rout. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... now passing his declining years quietly on his farm, a dozen miles from Springfield, Illinois, was a compositor on the "Sangamo Journal" from 1836 to 1843, and it was he who put into type the poem by "Cathleen," which, with the "Lost Townships" letters, led General Shields to challenge Lincoln. "This poem," says Mr. Lamb, "was written by Mary Todd and Julia Jayne, afterward the wife of Senator Lyman ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... latter was an editor in his native land, and his bold utterances soon attracted the attention of the authorities. Persecution began, and Angiolillo fled from Italy to Spain, thence to France and Belgium, finally settling in England. While there he found employment as a compositor, and immediately became the friend of all his colleagues. One of the latter thus described Angiolillo: "His appearance suggested the journalist rather than the disciple of Guttenberg. His delicate hands, moreover, betrayed ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... that wretched little printing-office the compositor had made "Brickell" out of Brackett, and as he was his own proof-reader, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... that the word "courtiers" was a misprint for "countenances," arising from an anticipation, by foreglance of the compositor's eye, of the word "courtier" a few lines below. The written r is easily and often confounded with, the written n. The compositor read the first syllable court, and—his eye at the same time catching the word "courtier" lower down—he completed the word without ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... devil, with a laudable anxiety for our success, has communicated the following pathetic story. As a specimen of stenotypography, or compositor's short-hand, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the power to read at all, which came with the Mandans Revenge, the one salient thing in memory is the sudden finding of Carlyle's Heroes and Sartor Resartus. Some literary-minded compositor in my father's employ had placed the book in a rack of type-cases, and had apparently forgotten it. It bore on many pages the stamp of some Young Men's Christian Association in a Northern town, and my literary-minded compositor seems to have looted it. It was my most valued possession for ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... Telegraph, going from there to New Orleans as private secretary of the editor of the Crescent Monthly. When the Crescent waned and disappeared from the journalistic sky, he returned to Georgia and became editor, compositor, pressman, mailing clerk, and entire force ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... to civilization I embarked in my first newspaper venture. I was employed in the office as compositor and foreman and at the expiration of the first month had to take the "plant, fixtures and good will," for my pay. In fact, I was given the office on a promise to run the paper and keep it alive. I so ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... more letters upon its face instead of one. This, his Lordship rightly considered, would save labor, if only available combinations could be determined; since, using such types, it would frequently happen that the compositor would need to make but one movement for two or three or even four letters. The desired economy, however, was not secured. Subsequent attempts at combinations were made in England, but all proved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... intellectual brilliancy, his dazzling technique and rare rhythmical sense; but . . . he is totally devoid of sympathy." Dear! Dear! What is to be understood by this? Should he sprinkle his pages with sympathetic adjectives, so many to the paragraph, as the country compositor sprinkles commas? Surely not. The little gentlemen are not quite so infinitesimal as that. There have been many tellers of jokes, and the greater of them, it is recorded, never smiled at their own, not even in the crucial moment when the audience ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... is also the monotype, another ingenious invention, which produces single letters and prepares them for casting. With two such machines you might suppose that the compositor would have little to do. Nevertheless, in spite of each of these labor-saving devices, there are always odd jobs to be done that cannot be performed by either of these agencies; there are short articles, the making up and designing of pages, advertisements, ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... some to Banter, who previous to his arrest had put his foot through several "forms" which it was inadvisable to let fall into the hands of the police, encumbered the floor. Everything was intensely chaotic and intensely dirty, from the type cases and the other scanty belongings to the dormant compositor. Armitage understood nothing of printing and I very little, and there we stood in the midst of a disorganised printing-office whence all had fled save only the unsavoury youth on the couch. I looked at Armitage and Armitage looked at me, and such was the helpless ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... issuing 'The Long Islander' at random intervals,—once a week, once in two weeks, once in three,—until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt himself was editor, publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... have gone out to get something. Or perhaps she is with the people, a compositor and his wife, who live on the floor below. They are very good to her. I'll go and find her. Accommodate yourself with a chair, signore." And he drew the best chair forward for me, and dusted ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... at the age of thirteen. A printer's office is, in itself, a source of education, and Whitman soon began to write for the papers, finally going to New York City, where, for twelve years, he worked on Newspaper Row, as reporter or compositor, making friends with all sorts and conditions of men and entering heart and soul into the busy life of the great city. The people, the seething masses on the streets, had ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... were) were sufficient to procure him the post of recorder of the "Doings of the Ring" on the staff of the Weekly Dispatch, which post he occupied at the time he officiated as literary showman to "Tom and Jerry." He had however tried many trades,—had been in turn a compositor, bookseller, sporting writer, newspaper reporter, and even secretary to an Irish theatrical manager. The success of "Life in London," which he arrogated to himself, raised up a crop of enemies as well as friends, and he soon afterwards received his conge from the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... to read proof on many pages of the book, and at odd times set some type.... The penmanship of the copy furnished was good, but the grammar, spelling and punctuation were done by John H. Gilbert, who was chief compositor in the office. I have heard him swear many a time at the syntax and orthography of Cowdery, and declare that he would not set another line of the type. There were no paragraphs, no punctuation and no capitals. All that was done in the printing office, and what a time there used ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to be paid for the copy-right. I understand that nothing was allowed by the booksellers on that account; and I remember his telling me, that a large portion of it having by mistake been written upon both sides of the paper, so as to be inconvenient for the compositor, it cost him twenty pounds to have it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... coiners and forgers. Women were on the watch to give the alarm by their screams if an officer appeared near the workshop. The press was immediately pushed into a closet behind the bed; the types were flung into the coalhole, and covered with cinders: the compositor disappeared through a trapdoor in the roof, and made off over the tiles of the neighbouring houses. In these dens were manufactured treasonable works of all classes and sizes, from halfpenny broadsides ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that composition could go on in spells of leisure. To one so mechanical in his tastes as Edison, it was quite easy to learn the rudiments of the printing art, and thus the Weekly Herald came into existence, of which he was compositor, pressman, editor, publisher, and newsdealer. Only one or two copies of this journal are now discoverable, but its appearance can be judged from the reduced facsimile here shown. The thing was indeed well done as the work of a youth shown by the date to be less than fifteen years old. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... walked off to watch a compositor picking up type out of a case. Horace, on the other hand, appeared to be deeply interested in Mr Barber's eloquent observations, and inquired quite artlessly, but with a twinkle in his eye,—"Is the pump near here? I was looking for ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... a day besides beer. But meantime our spiritual friend was poaching on the manors of the following people—of the chamber counsel, of the attorney, of the professional accountant, of the printer and compositor, of the notary public, of the scrivener, and sometimes, we fear, of the sheriff's officer in arranging for special bail. These very uncanonical services one might have fancied sufficient, with spinning and spelling, for filling up the temporal cares of any one man's time. But this restless ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... contains fifteen atoms; they are arranged on a slanting disk in a flat ring, and the force goes in at the top of one atom, and out of the bottom of it into the top of the next, and so on, making a closed circuit. The two little spheres, each containing a triplet, are like fill-up paragraphs to a compositor—they seem to be kept standing and popped in where wanted. The sphere marked x is a proto-compound, ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... intelligent compositor (Mr. J.P.S. Bicknell), who has been a noter of curious passages in his time, informs me that Bell was the first printer who confined the small letter "s" to its present shape, and rejected altogether the older form "s." [Transcriber's ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sign in Los Onglaze translated into French for the benefit of Lizy, the linotype operator who sets this column in Paris, and who says she has yet to get a laugh out of it, but two Frenchmen who tried their hand at it gave it up. Perhaps the compositor at the adjacent machine can randmacnally it for Lizy. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... take a familiar example. It is, we are told in a very familiar illustration, as absurd to imagine that the world as it exists is the work of unguided natural forces, as it would be to believe that the rows of letters in a compositor's "stick" had of their own contained force arranged themselves in intelligible sentences. The absurdity of the last supposition is admitted, but why is that so? Obviously because we have the previous knowledge that the type itself is a manufactured thing, and that its arrangement ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... I found poorly qualified for their business. Bradford had not been bred to it, and was very illiterate; and Keimer, though something of a scholar, was a mere compositor, knowing nothing of presswork. He had been one of the French prophets, and could act their enthusiastic agitations. At this time he did not profess any particular religion, but something of all on occasion; was very ignorant of the world, and had, as I afterward found, a good deal ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... d'outre-tombe of Chateaubriand, for example; it is of daily occurrence in regard to the familiar correspondence of well-known persons which is printed in haste to satisfy the curiosity of the public, and of which the original manuscript is very fragile. First the text is copied; it is then set up by the compositor from the copy, which comes to the same thing as copying it again; this second copy is lastly, or ought to be, collated (in the proofs) with the first copy, or, better still, with the original, by some one who ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... to pale compositor, and behold, the news is bawled all over London! Such work as this goes on for ever around the church of St. Dunstan. Scribblers come and scribblers go; compositors come to their work young and hopeful, they leave it bent and poisoned, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the printing-office of the New England Galaxy, learning to set type, and, shortly, came to have charge of the making up of the paper. My father often said that the best school education one could get was at the compositor's stand. Edwin early began to write for the paper, and I remember, now, with what admiration an article of his on "Massachusetts" was read more than sixty years ago, and while he was yet a boy. The Galaxy was sold in 1827; and my father and brother gave ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... for the compositor. Every letter must be right. If you do a good piece of work it is altogether probable that your composition will get into one of ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... error of the compositor, the following names were omitted in the list published in our last paper, of volunteers who so greatly contributed to the glorious defence and preservation of ...
— The Defence of Stonington (Connecticut) Against a British Squadron, August 9th to 12th, 1814 • J. Hammond Trumbull
... with a flourish, as compared with the involved minuteness of the rest of the script, and the latter covers every limit of the page in a devoted way. His letters were formed obscurely, though most fascinatingly, and he was almost frolicsome in his indifference to the comfort of the compositor. Still he had none of the frantic reconsiderations of Scott or Balzac. If he made a change in a word it was while it was fresh, and no one could obliterate what he had written with a more fearless blot of the finger, or one which looked more earnest and interesting. There was ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... orders to every department, from press-room to composing-room, from foundation stone to the turrets of that tall pile, everything being governed by the will and impulse of a single mind. Indeed, to such an extent is labor-saving carried in the Parisian printing office that the compositor may never have seen the journalist whose leaders he has spent half his life in setting up, for copy, proof and revise glide up or down as if by the agency only of magic, and the real ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... shading his eyes from the light with his hand, an old trick of his compositor days, and still looked at her in ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... played a small part in our philosopher's life, and least of all was it active in these London days. His skepticism in fact became acute, and sought relief in public expression. As a compositor Franklin was engaged in setting up one of the many religious treatises then pouring out against the deists, and as the author's arguments seemed insufficient to the young reasoner, he wrote and printed a rejoinder. This is the pamphlet called "A Dissertation on Liberty and ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... that Mr. Singer (in common with Wood, Bliss, Ellis, Headley, and all other biographers,) overlooked the misprint of ARAMANTHA for AMARANTHA, which the old compositor made, with one or two exceptions, wherever the word occurred. In giving a correct representation of the original title-page, I have ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... As Goldsmith finished writing out each page of his poem for press, he laid it aside on top of the pages preceding; and, when all was done, he forgot to sort back his pages in reverse order. That is all. Given a good stolid compositor with no thought beyond doing his duty with the manuscript as it reached him, you have what Mr. Dobell has recovered— an immortal poem printed wrong-end-foremost page by page. I call the result delightful, and (when you come to think of it) the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one hundred copies, of which thirty were sent to Paris. So much for its attractions—now for its flaws. In reprinting the dedication to madame du Deffand, I had to insert eight accents to make decent French of it! The avis is a mere medley of fragments: I could not ask a compositor to set it up! The avertissement is copied, without a word of intimation to that effect, from the edition of 1746. The notes to the epitre are also copied from that edition, except L'abbe de Chaulieu; and two of the notes to the memoirs are from the same ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... now of the Morris Chronicle. L.P. continued the publication of the paper, as editor and proprietor, for a long time, and at last succeeded in gaining for his journal a firm foothold in the community. He labored early and late at the work that was before him—editor, compositor and pressman—often beset with discouragements, always feebly supported in his efforts, but still hopeful and plucky. He could hardly, in 1860, have dreamed that within twenty years, steam presses would be brought into the same village to follow in the wake of the clumsy press whose ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... the Bibliomania. If one single copy of a work happen to be printed in a more particular manner than another; and if the compositor (clever rogue) happen to have transposed or inverted a whole sentence or page; if a plate or two, no matter of what kind or how executed; go along with it, which is not to be found in the remaining copies; if the paper ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... complacer, (pres. complazco), to please. completamente, completely. completar, to complete. completo,-a, complete; por ——, completely. componer, (see poner), to compose, prepare, arrange; —se, to consist. composicion, f., composition; preparation; dish. compositor, m., composer. compota, f., stew. compra, f., purchase. comprador, m., buyer. comprar, to buy. comprender, to understand. compuesto,-a, arranged; p.p. of componer. compuso, past abs. of componer. ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... James was nearly forty; he was tall and slender, stooped a little, and had sandy whiskers, and a nervous cough, and positive ideas on many subjects—one of which was that he was a printer. His apprentice, or "devil," had left him, because the devil did not like to be cuffed whenever the compositor shuffled his fonts. James needed another apprentice, and proposed to take his younger brother and make a man of him if the old folks were willing. The old folks were willing and Ben was duly bound by law to his brother, agreeing to serve him faithfully, as Jacob served Laban, for seven years ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the denial of one, comes to be associated with the denial of plurality," reads as "nine, the decimal of one, aims to be associated with the decimal of plurality." This is intentional; had it been a compositor's reading of bad handwriting, these would not have been the only mistakes; to say nothing of the corrector of the press. And both the compositor and reader would have guessed, from the first line being translated into "one is not one," that it must have been "one's none," ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... to come to. Now, Sir, let me introduce to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's him, and Brother Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less said about our professions the better, for we have been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and correspondents of the Backwoodsman when we thought the paper wanted one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first, and see that's sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We'll take one of your cigars apiece, and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Goldsmith, turning over each page as written, had laid it on the top of the preceding page of MS. and forgotten to rearrange them when done. Thus the series of pages were reversed; and, so reversed, were set up in type by a matter-of-fact compositor. Mr. Dobell at once accepted this happy explanation; which—as Mr. Quiller Couch points out—has the advantage of being a 'blunder just so natural to Goldsmith as to be almost postulable.' One or two of the variations of Mr. Dobell's 'find'—variations, it should be added, antecedent ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... follows, spreading inky spots over the paper, resembling a woodcut portraying the sparks from a blacksmith's hammer. Blots like mashed spiders, or crushed huckleberries, occasionally intervene, but the old veteran dashes them with sand, leaving a swearing compositor to scratch off the soil, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... where he arrived in October, 1723. He soon obtained work as a printer, but after a few months he was induced by Governor Keith to go to London, where, finding Keith's promises empty, he again worked as a compositor till he was brought back to Philadelphia by a merchant named Denman, who gave him a position in his business. On Denman's death he returned to his former trade, and shortly set up a printing house of his own ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... been surpassed in the editorial faculty, at the same time being apt as compositor, pressman, verse-maker, compiler and reporter; but as adviser, satirist and humorist he was perhaps at his best. His one and two line bits of comment and wisdom were models of pithiness, and few writers have equalled ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... features bound in stale parchment. Complexion she had none, but she had spotlessness of skin, and sons and daughters just resembling her, like cheaper editions of a precious quarto of a perished type. You discerned the imitation of the type, you acknowledged the inferior compositor. Mr. Cramborne Wathin was by birth of a grade beneath his wife; he sprang (behind a curtain of horror) from tradesmen. The Bench was in designation for him to wash out the stain, but his children suffered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... while, Dad would write a blistering editorial about one or the other or both of them. Whenever he did, I would put my gun on, and so would Julio Kubanoff, the one-legged compositor who is the third member of the Times staff, and we would take turns making sure nobody got behind Dad's back. Nothing ever happened, though, and that always rather hurt me. Those two racketeers were in so tight ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... HARD CASE.—Miss Print is responsible for a great deal. The other day a tender-hearted person read in a daily paper, that a stranger "arriving in Paris, did not even know where to go and die." How sad! But the compositor had only omitted the "n" from the last word of the sentence. So it wasn't so bad after all, though for the stranger ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... office of the Daily Day-before-yesterday. I had an article in, and I wanted to read the proof. I can stand any thing in the world better than I can endure a compositor's blunders. Do any of you ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... inflamed the ambition which formed so powerful an element in her mental organization, and a longing desire for fame took possession of her soul. Early and late she toiled; one article was scarcely in the hands of the compositor ere she was engaged upon another. She lived, as it were, in a perpetual brain fever, and her physical frame suffered proportionably. The little gate opened and closed with a creaking sound, and, hearing a step near her, Beulah looked up and saw her guardian before her. The light from the dining ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... as many contractions certainly did, may have survived in writing long after it was banished from print, and which would be easily confounded with d. Can Mr. White find an example of dod for doth, where the word could not be doubtful to the compositor? The inability of foreigners to pronounce the th was often made a source of fun on the stage. Puttenham speaks of dousand for thousand as a vulgarism. Shakspeare himself makes Caius say dat, and "by my trot"; and in Marston's "Dutch Courtezan," (Act ii. Sc. 1,) ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Stamp Act. She afterward removed to Salem, Mass., and continued its publication for several years. Penelope Russell printed The Censor in Boston, Mass., in 1771. She set her own type, and was such a ready compositor as to set up her editorials without written copy, while working at her case. The most tragical and interesting events were thus recorded by her. The first paper published in America, living to a second issue, was the Massachusetts Gazette and North Boston News Letter. It ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... dispensed with. Pray don't trouble yourself with such useless courtesies. I can well trust your editor, when I don't use queer phrases which prove themselves wrong by creating a distrust in the sober compositor. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the bank, and internal improvements, had come to the parting of the ways; the old order of things had ended under John Quincy Adams—the new had just commenced under Andrew Jackson. But the young compositor needed no guide-post to direct his political footsteps. In 1834, he had established the New Yorker and those who read it became Whigs. His mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Folio, some praising it as among the most correct, and others blaming it as one of the most incorrect editions of its time. The truth seems to be that it is of very varied excellence, differing from time to time according to the state of the MS. from which it was printed, the skill of the compositor, and the diligence of the corrector. There is the widest difference, for instance, between the text of the Two Gentlemen of Verona and that of ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... cease to sell, let the consumer cease from buying, let the workman cease from working, let the butcher cease from killing, let the baker cease from baking, let everything keep holiday, even to the National Printing Office, so that Louis Bonaparte may not find a compositor to compose the Moniteur, not a pressman to machine it, not a bill-sticker to placard it! Isolation, solitude, a void space round this man! Let the nation withdraw from him. Every power from which the nation withdraws falls like a tree ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Perhaps in England people liked to know that a hundred yards of trenches had been taken at one place, and that three German attacks had failed at another; but when you were actually engaged (or had been or would soon again be) in taking part in those things, it seemed a waste of paper and compositor's time to record them. There was a column of letters also from indignant Britons, using violent language about the crimes and treachery of Germany. That also was uninteresting and far-fetched. Nothing that Germany had done mattered the least. There was no use in arguing ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... uncle here who was a farmer, but Robert aspired to own a paper, and drifted into the office of the Hartford Courant. Robert Bonner determined to own a paper; he, therefore, set about it, working faithfully every day, and overtime, saving his money. He mastered his business, becoming an expert compositor. In 1844 he went to New York and obtained employment on the Mirror. He was intrusted with the oversight of the advertising department, and it was soon seen that he had a decidedly fine taste in the arrangement ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... unparalleled power of work, care nothing about hours, and, so long as they are paid, will go on with a dogged steady persistence in toil for sixteen hours a day such as no European can rival. No English ship-carpenter will work like a Chinese, no laundress will wash as many clothes, and a Chinese compositor would be very soon expelled for over-toil by an English 'chapel' ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... to do something for me, but I disliked her, and never went near her. I did not see why I should be ticketed with her label, and as Edward Gibson was very much like Edward Gibbon, the immortal author of the Decline and Fall, I dropped the 's' and stuck in a 'b.' I am nothing but a compositor on the Sentinel, and Saturday afternoon, after the paper is out, is a holiday for me, unless there is any reporting to do, for I have to turn ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... the provincial press. Then country clergymen bustled up and tried to recall the exact rendering; while others who had never heard of the epigram waxed emulous and produced translations of their own, with the Latin of which the local compositor made sport after his kind. For weeks there continued quite a pretty rivalry among ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... workingwomen, taught them how to organize among themselves, stirred up the newspapers to speak in their behalf, and interested in them many prominent women and also "Sorosis," that famous club, which had just been formed. In addressing women typesetters she said: "The four things indispensable to a compositor are quickness of movement, good spelling, correct punctuation and brains enough to take in the idea of the article to be set up. Therefore, let no young woman think of learning the trade unless she possesses these requisites. Without them there will be only ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of this article, which is sure to be rushed at the last minute and which should plan to leave New York for Philadelphia Wednesday night and be (with a special delivery stamp on it) in Philadelphia in the compositor's hands on Thursday morning—should take as has happened before, from one and a half days to two days or three days (with its special ten cents on it to hurry it) to get there, what would any one ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a series of nurses who came and went in somewhat rapid succession during the early years of the White Hope's life. She was introduced by Steve, who, it seemed, had known her since she was a child. She was the nineteen-year-old daughter of a compositor on one of the morning papers, a little, mouselike thing, with tiny hands and feet, a soft voice, and eyes that took up far more than their fair share of ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... it is called, was not so abundant at this season but that Cerizet could manage it without help. Cerizet, compositor, clicker, and foreman, realized in his person the "phenomenal triplicity" of Kant; he set up type, read proof, took orders, and made out invoices; but the most part of the time he had nothing to do, and used to read novels in his den ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... my son, being then a member of that Union, introduced and, after some hard fighting, succeeded in carrying a resolution placing women compositors on a par in every respect with men. There was not at that time a single woman compositor in the State, to my son's knowledge; there is one now in Raleigh and two apprentices, who claimed and receive all the advantages that men applying for admission ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... endeavoured a few years ago to solve the problem set on record the result of his researches, by which, according to a Scotch authority, he is said to have found the author in (1) a policeman of Glasgow, (2) a bricklayer of Edinburgh, (3) a railway official at Perth, (4) a compositor in Dundee, (5) an hotel-keeper in Inverness, and (6) a "Free Press" reporter in Aberdeen. English and Irish evidently had no chance. A letter, professing to explain the whole mystery, which lies before me from a medical correspondent, under ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Byron had reference to Ludovico Sforza and others. The fact of the change is asserted of Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI, though in not quite so short a period, grief and not fear being the cause. Ziemssen cites Landois' case of a compositor of thirty-four who was admitted to a hospital July 9th with symptoms of delirium tremens; until improvement began to set in (July 13th) he was continually tormented by terrifying pictures of the imagination. In the night preceding the day last mentioned the hair of the head and beard of the patient, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... more meritorious persons than fifth-rate authors. It is true that Burke returned such disordered proofs that the printer usually found it least troublesome to set the whole afresh, and Miss Martineau tells a story of a Scotch compositor who fled from Edinburgh to avoid Carlyle's manuscript, and to his horror was presently confronted with a piece of the too familiar copy which made him cry, "Lord, have mercy! Have you got that man to print for!" But most editors will ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... the rival or the conqueror of his master. He abandoned his livery to live by his pencil; but instead of the Louvre, he stopped at a sign-post. Mere learning is only a compiler, and does with the pen what the compositor does with the type: each sets up a book with the hand. Stone-masons collected the dome of St Paul's, but Wren ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... But the compositor felt that magazine literature should be even cheaper than it was, and to that thought in his mind his fingers responded, so that when the advertisement appeared, this particular ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... of these new model houses lived some people of the name of Smith. Mr. Smith was a compositor, and Mrs. Smith, nee Samuels, was none other than that very little girl whom, together with her brother, who died, I had once treated for erysipelas resulting from vaccination. In a way I felt grateful to her, for that case was the beginning of my ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... villain or, possibly, to a fool. But this was a concession to morality, it formed no part of his main scheme. Honest and hearty was Charles's dislike, and the past spread itself out very clearly before him; hatred is a skilful compositor. As if they were heads in a note-book, he ran through all the incidents of the Schlegels' campaign: the attempt to compromise his brother, his mother's legacy, his father's marriage, the introduction of the furniture, the unpacking of the same. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the Browning marriage till the proof of the newspaper ('Examiner') notice was sent; when he went into one of his great passions at the supposed hoax, ordered up the compositor to have a swear at him, and demanded to see the MS. from which it was taken: so it was brought, and he instantly recognised the hand of Browning's sister. Next day came a letter from R. B., saying he had often ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... servants, nurses, needlewomen, lady-helps (3). Similar persons are advertised for by private individuals; but besides these, I find: Wanted a bullock-driver, a carter, a coachman, a shoeing smith, three butchers, a bottler, two bakers, innumerable boys, barmen, a compositor, several dressmakers in all departments, half a dozen drapers' assistants, four grooms, sixty navvies in one advertisement, millers, haymakers, woodcutters, spademen, needlewomen, quarrymen, etc., two wheelwrights, a verger at L120 a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... himself only entrusted with the charge, seemed not to understand.—After a great deal of argument, the paper at last had a 'first reading,' & was the proceedings of the McBain meeting, signed by Child, Thompson and Stillwell; and was delivered to Mr. Bunce, to shew his compositor, who was in bed. Mr. Bunce insisted that some of the gentlemen should deliver the message which judge Stillwell seemed to be so anxious about. Here the three gentlemen were thrown into great confusion—eyed ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... is the reading of the 1st ed. and almost every other that we have seen. We are inclined, however, to believe that Scott wrote "clear." The facsimiles of his handwriting show that his d's and cl's might easily be confounded by a compositor. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... discovered his insight into the human heart, and his skill in correspondence, and they employed the boy to write their love-letters for them. In 1706 Richardson was apprenticed to a London printer, served a diligent apprenticeship, and worked as a compositor until he rose, late in life, to be master of the Stationers' Company. He was fifty years of age before he showed symptoms of any higher ambition than that of printing correctly acts of Parliament and new editions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... utmost development then supposed to be possible; and when such news came as that of the battle of Austerlitz, Trafalgar, or Waterloo, the edition was exhausted long before the demand was supplied. There was a compositor in the office of "The Times," named Thomas Martyn, who, as early as 1804, conceived the idea of applying Watt's improved steam-engine to a printing press. He showed his model to John Walter, who furnished him with money and room in which to continue his experiments, and perfect his ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... deep message of truth to man, would suffer it to lie at the mercy of a careless or a wicked copyist. Treasures so vast would not be left at the mercy of accidents so vile. Very little more than two hundred years ago, a London compositor, not wicked at all, but simply drunk, in printing Deuteronomy, left out the most critical of words; the seventh commandment he exhibited thus-'Thou shalt commit adultery;' in which form the sheet was struck off. And though in those ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... for the press, the author, the compositor, and the proof-reader are the three factors that enter into its construction. We will, however, treat more especially of the last-named in connection ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... man. I am complimenting you. Haven't you a place as office boy, compositor, or something ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... any one of these classes is called a font, the average weight of which is about 800 pounds. Whereas our alphabet has 26 letters, the compositor must really use of letters, spaces, accent marks, and other characters in an English font 152 distinct types, and in each font there are 195,000 individual pieces. The largest number of letters in a font belongs to small e—12,000; and the least number to the z—200. The letters, characters, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... life ... finds ... books in the running brooks, sermons in stones," etc. "This is stark nonsense, and must be remedied. Who ever found a book in a rivulet or a sermon in a rock? It is clearly an error of a most ignorant or careless compositor, who has transposed the nouns. Read, 'stones in the running brooks and sermons in books.' Sense is vindicated. Stones are frequently found in brooks. David chose smooth pebbles from the brook, and sermons are quite frequently printed and sold in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... defense of this lowly plant, on the score not only of its beauty, but of its usefulness in holding the sand in place; but, alas, "all men have not faith," and where the historian wrote Hudsonia tomentosa the antipathetic compositor set up Hudsonia tormentosa. That compositor was a Cape Cod man,—I would wager a dinner upon it. "Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges," I hear him mutter, as he slips the ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... gentle malice to change instantly the 'master' to 'mister.' Edwin was scarcely sure if Big James was not laughing at him. He could not help thinking that Big James had begun so promptly to call him 'mister' because the foreman compositor expected that the son of the house would at once begin to take a share in the business. He could not help thinking that his father must have so informed Big James. And all this vaguely disturbed Edwin, and reminded ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... was of great advantage to him in that he had learned to do something for which there was a demand. He could not earn much as a compositor, but his wants were simple and he could earn something. He soon secured a place on the Golden Era, and it became the doorway to his career. He was soon transferred to the editorial ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... to work a little longer, and Harry here is a pretty quick compositor now. The fact is, there isn't ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Clemens and Gillis to go to San Francisco, which had long attracted them. They were great friends, these two, and presently were living together and working on the same paper, the "Morning Call," Clemens as a reporter and Gillis as a compositor. ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a provisional government until the general situation in Germany had become more settled. In the midst of these discussions, Stephan Born walked into the room to report that he had brought the armed bands right into Freiberg, in good order and without any losses. This young man was a compositor who had contributed greatly to Heubner's peace of mind during the last three days in Dresden by taking over the chief command. His simplicity of manner made a very encouraging impression on us, particularly when we ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... immigrated to Canada a short time before the excitement arising out of the Gourlay persecution reached its height, and when he himself was barely twenty years of age. He was a printer by trade, and for some time after his arrival worked as a compositor in the office of The Upper Canada Gazette, published at York by the King's Printer, Dr. Robert Charles Horne. Finding that he possessed much intelligence and a fair education, his employer deputed ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... consists of thousands of symbols, each representing an idea. The pupil must therefore spend years in learning to make, and know and read the mere signs of language. And in the modern necessities of printing,(228) the compositor must handle not less than 4,000 or 5,000 Chinese characters, besides the Japanese kana and other needful marks. The kana here mentioned were the result of a promising effort which was made to simplify the Chinese written language by expressing it in symbols ...
— Japan • David Murray
... of Fust and Schoeffer, it may be mentioned, consists of two printer's rules in saltaire, on two shields, hanging from a stump, the two rules on the right shield forming an angle of 45: the adoption of a compositor's setting-rule was very appropriate. It was nearly twenty years before the introduction of woodcuts into books became general, Gunther Zainer beginning it at Augsburg in 1471-1475. The inception of this movement ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts |
