"Compositor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... potatoes, the reverend gentleman could average seven shillings 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 ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to the above charge. Only the earlier printers (naturally following therein the practice of their predecessors the scribes) were very liberal of contractions, and used an excess of 'tied' letters, which, by the way, are very useful to the compositor. So I entirely eschewed contractions, except for the '&,' and had very few tied letters, in fact none but the absolutely necessary ones. Keeping my end steadily in view, I designed a black-letter type which I think I may claim to be as readable ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... anti-bibliolaters, are not so foolish as to believe that God having once sent a 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 days no practical mischief could ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... young, on plans more or less reasonable or absurd, by men who had fed upon Rousseau's Emile and invented variations upon his system. On leaving school, Beranger was placed with a printer in the city, where he became a journeyman printer and compositor, which has occasioned his being often compared to Franklin,—a comparison of which he is not unworthy, in his love for the progress of the human race, and the piquant and ingenious turn he knew how to give to good sense. From this first employment as printer Beranger acquired ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... or six hundred essays form a whole, and a whole which has the interest of a novel. It must be remembered, too, that at that time no novel, giving a lively and powerful picture of the common life and manners of England, had appeared. Richardson was working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds' nests. Smollett was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which connects together the Spectator's Essays, gave to our ancestors their first taste of an exquisite and untried ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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. printed &c v.; in type; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... These two roads, one of which was the great high road between France and Germany, decussated at this very point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's cross, or letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large X, in which case the point of intersection, the locus of conflux for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing him to a hair's ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the use 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 many italics increases the cost of composition ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... called the Princess worked in the office less than two years, but the memory of her still lingers, though hardly could one say like "the scent of the roses"; for the Princess was not merely a poor compositor, she was the kind that would make mistakes and blame others for them, and that kind never learns. Though she ran away to marry Red Martin—which was her own mistake—this habit of blaming others for her faults ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... founded in special opposition to the 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... office of the Golden Era as a compositor, but soon began to write articles for the paper. These attracted favorable notice and he was made ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... 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
... and neatly, his wonderful skill in manipulation aiding him in the mere mechanical act, and his ignorance of the language confining him simply to the mechanical effort, confirming the printer's axiom, that the printer who considers or follows the ideas of his copy makes a poor compositor. He would set up deliberately long diatribes against himself, composed by his fellow-printers, and hung on his hook as copy, and even such short sentences as "Wan Lee is the devil's own imp," "Wan Lee is a Mongolian ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... respect, and the use of even a small dictionary will enable you to avoid mistakes. Every magazine has its own rules for punctuation and paragraphing, in accordance with which an accepted MS. is edited before it is given to the compositor; but that is no good reason why you should neglect to prepare your MS. properly. The general rules are few and easily understood, and they enable you to give your work definite form and arrangement, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... that which shall please, but long before. His language must come from him as music comes from the rapid touch of the great performer's fingers; as words come from the mouth of the indignant orator; as letters fly from the fingers of the trained compositor; as the syllables tinkled out by little bells form themselves to the ear of the telegraphist. A man who thinks much of his words as he writes them will generally leave behind him work that smells of oil. I speak here, of course, of prose; for ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... printer was a literary man as well as a mechanic. The editor of a newspaper was always a printer and often composed his articles as he set them in type; so "composing" came to mean typesetting, and one who sets type is a compositor. Now James needed an apprentice. It happened then that young Benjamin, at the age of thirteen, was bound over by ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... 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 meant to tell him or write ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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
... 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,) we find Francischina, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... household of the Kings of Prussia, there is a custom, if not a law, that every boy shall learn a trade. I believe this is a fact, though I have no certain proof of it. The Emperor Wilhelm is said to be a glazier, the Crown Prince a compositor, and on the Emperor's birthday not long ago his majesty received an engraving by Prince Henry and a, book bound by Prince Waldemar, two younger sons of the Crown Prince. Let me refer to sacred writ; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Catholic to the last. Gerald was sitting up by the window, so changed that we should not have known him, except for the wonderful likeness to Felix that has come upon him. It seems that he had not only all the writing of that horrid paper to do, but all the compositor's work, or whatever you call it. The people put upon him when they saw how well he could do it, and he could not refuse because his mother needed comforts, and he durst not get thrown out of employment. He went on, first with aching back, then his legs got ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... in use. His plan was to make the type-shank thicker than usual, and cast two or 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 abortive. In the office of the London "Times," castings of entire words—devised, I think, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... 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. He had not yet heard of the request to sleep at ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the game and carried it into 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 these ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... detachable, the size of the sheets is about 71/2 x 83/4 in., and the price is only that usually charged for common scribbling paper. THE AUTHOR'S PAPER PAD may be comfortably used, whether at the desk, held in the hand, or resting on the knee. As being most convenient for both author and compositor, the paper is ruled the narrow way, and of course on one side only.—Sixpence each, 5/- per ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... Bartlett. In 1818, Ephraim W. Allen, proprietor of the Newburyport Herald, accepted Lloyd, then thirteen years of age, as an apprentice and taught him the printer's trade. Here at once he found a vocation suited to his tastes and became a rapid and accurate compositor. The printing-office proved an excellent school for the young man, developing his literary taste and ambition. He was fond of reading, and delighted in poetry and fiction. Politics especially attracted ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... you an alteration in the Agnus Dei of my Gran Mass, which I beg you to hand to the compositor. The voice parts remain as before, but in the pauses I make the first subject come in again in the basses, which makes the movement more completely one whole. The compositor must work by this proof for the whole Agnus Dei, and only revert to the general score where the "Dona ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... powers (such as they 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, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... reviewer does not find time to read a line of us; but we do not for that reason escape being criticised, "shown up," and martyred. The list of errata again, committed by Lamb, was probably of a magnitude to alarm any possible compositor; and yet these errata will never be known to mankind. They are dead and buried. They have been cut off prematurely; and for any effect upon their generation, might as well never have existed. Then the returns, in a pecuniary sense, from these folios—how important were they! It is not common, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 of him. He began to read the English ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... 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 on ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... three or four thousand copies a day, had attained the 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 machine. ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... make no allowance whatever for the least amplification of bald matter of fact. If the author dilates at all on his own feelings and impressions, they chuckle and sneer; and if he errs in the least—or the compositor for him—in his nautical details, they cry out that he is a know-nothing, a marine, a horse-jockey, a humbug. To please seamen, any book about their profession must be written precisely in the lucid and highly-imaginative style of a log-book—their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... in the last edition of Dodsley come within this category; and we may signalise the unique tragedy of Appius and Virginia, 1575, as a prodigy of negligent and ignorant execution on the part of the original compositor. But to the same cause is due our still remaining uncertainty as to the true reading of numerous places ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... thus—Suavem dixisti? Quam vellem et Orpheutaceam. But, perhaps, reader, you fail to recognise in this form our old friend Heu taceo. But here he is to a certainty, in spite of the rat: and in a different form of letters the compositor will show him, up to you as—vellem et Orp. [HEU TACEAM]. Possibly, being in good humour, you will be disposed to wink at the seemingly surreptitious AM, though believing the real word to be taceo. Let ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... education, the boy entered a printer's office 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 a compelling ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... showing off, humbugging, lying ... but when you come to look at him more attentively, he's become almost worse than before. And this, too, one must remark: the man himself, alone that is, never attains this self-recognition, try as he will; his eyes cannot see his own defects, just as the compositor's wearied eyes cannot see the slips he makes; another fresh eye is needed for that. My thanks to you, Marya Alexandrovna.... You see, I speak to you of myself; of you I dare not speak.... Ah, how absurd my last letter seems to me now, so flowery and sentimental! I beg you earnestly, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 my ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... type-founders, book-binders, and paper-makers. The printer, as he existed even in the days of the Estiennes, has become almost an abstraction. The employment of women in type-setting has struck this noble industry to the heart, and consummated its degradation. I have seen a female compositor—and she was one of the best—who did not know how to read, and was acquainted only with the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... 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 of doggrel verse up to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lad, he helped his father, a printer by trade, in setting type.—Translator's Note.) At a certain hour of the day, a ray of sunlight would glint through the window of the gloomy workshop and light up the little compositor's case. Then his eight-legged neighbour would come down from her web and on the edge of the case take her share of the sunshine. The boy did not interfere with her; he welcomed the trusting visitor as a friend and as a pleasant diversion from the long monotony. When we lack the society of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... 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
... course of his peregrinations, he came to reside in the city in which our story finds him. Here he had become a compositor in the office of a daily newspaper, and, happening to be introduced to the Misses Dunning, soon became a favourite with them, and a constant visitor at their house. Thus he became acquainted with their brother. Becoming disgusted with the constant work and late hours of ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the town, both of them poorly qualified. Bradford was very illiterate, and Keimer, though something of a scholar, was a mere compositor, knowing nothing of press-work. Keimer gave me employment. He had been one of the French prophets, and could act their enthusiastic agitations. He did not profess any particular religion, but something of all on occasion, and had a good deal of the knave in his composition. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... attempt to gain work was in a printing office, where he succeeded in getting a case, receiving his pay, according to the custom of the times, in orders on grocery and clothing stores. After this he was foreman and compositor in the office of a monthly publication, called the Farmers' Journal, where he continued to devote his spare time to reading and study. Subsequently he became a clerk in a grocery store at a salary of ninety-six dollars ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... condescension to popular silliness it is nothing. But Byron secured access to thousands of readers in England and on the Continent by strength and loveliness, a feat seldom equalled and never perhaps surpassed. The present writer's father, a compositor in a dingy printing office, repeated verses from "Childe Harold" at the case. Still more remarkable, Byron reached one of this writer's friends, an officer in the Navy, of the ancient stamp; and the attraction, ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... 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 ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 dig ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that 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 ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the liberty of suggesting a continuance of your vigorous editorials upon Stephen Girard? The word "finessed" in my last, your compositor has ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... big printing establishment we find the various branches of the printing trade have employes who are specialists at one thing. In the printing trade the craftsman is either a compositor a proof-reader, a make-up man, a pressman ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... Middemores and Bracebridges, and how that the sole boast of a descendant of the Saxon Earls of Warwick was in his day the fact of his grandfather having "kept several cows and sold milk." It is but a few years back since the present writer saw the last direct descendant of the Holtes working as a compositor in one of the newspaper offices of this town, and almost any day there was to be seen in the streets a truck with the name painted on of "Charles ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... 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 him in masterly skill in argument. He ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... 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' of ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... put into wrappers and posted by three in the morning. The situation looked desperate. At a quarter to twelve, Gluck explained that a column of matter already set up had been "pied" by a careless compositor. It happened to be the column containing the latest news and Raphael had not even seen a proof of it. Still, Gluck conjured him not to trouble further: he would give his reader strict injunctions not to miss the slightest error. Raphael had already seen and passed the first column of this page, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... 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 takes the place of the deceased author. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... wretched little printing-office the compositor had made "Brickell" out of Brackett, and as he was his own proof-reader, the mistake was ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... the farmer who was obliged to keep draught cattle to perform service due to the landlord. The boy received a solid education at the Gymnasium, or public school of the town. At a proper age he was bound apprentice for five years to Breitkopf and Hartel, of Leipzig, as compositor and printer; but after serving for four and a quarter years, he was released from his engagement because of his exceptional skill, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... 1: The word "typographer" is used to differentiate between the compositor and the printer, the latter being the one who does ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... character, upon paper of sufficiently good texture. It was bound in sheepskin, and I gave only thirty sous for it new. How it can be published at such a price, is beyond my conception. M. Joubert told me that the compositor or workman received 20 francs for setting up 36 pages, and that the paper was 12 francs per ream. In our own country, such prices would be at ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... composing room there 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, and a score of things outside ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... 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 ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... landlady. He had done her an uncommon good turn, queer as was the lodger thus introduced. His own apostleship to the sons of toil gave Mrs. Drabdump no twinges of perplexity. Tom Mortlake had been a compositor; and apostleship was obviously a profession better paid and of a higher social status. Tom Mortlake—the hero of a hundred strikes—set up in print on a poster, was unmistakably superior to Tom Mortlake setting up other men's names at a case. Still, the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... 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. Here ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... with the edges a little wavering, a little blurred, as if it had been burnt by fire into the whiteness of the page. Below, the smaller type of a chorus reeled and shook through all its lines. Set up by an intoxicated compositor. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... place. Her successful career thus far 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 ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... 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, ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... was twelve years old, 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 ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... editor to decline the services of a member of the opposite party as a leader writer, or even as a political reviewer or in any capacity in which his opinions would affect his work. It is illiberal to reject him as a compositor or as a clerk, or in any capacity in which his opinions would not affect his work for the paper. It is not illiberal to refuse a position of trust to the man whose record shows that he is likely to abuse such a trust. It is illiberal—and ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... 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 ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... 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, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Lamb, 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... Philadelphia presently and found work "subbing" on a daily paper,'The Inquirer.' He was a fairly swift compositor. He could set ten thousand ems a day, and he received pay according to the amount of work done. Days or evenings when there was no vacant place for him to fill he visited historic sites, the art-galleries, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 it with ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... 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 ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... 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 it ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... York begin to join the men's union, and there have been a few women members in it ever since. But how few in proportion may be judged from the figures on September 30, 1911. Total membership 6,969, of whom 192 were women. I believe this to be typical of the position of the woman compositor in ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... that a great council was held regarding Walter's future. He didn't want to become a compositor; and to be a sailor—that would have suited him, but his mother was opposed to it. Stoffel, too, objected on the ground that usually only young people who are worthless on land ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... religious imagination 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 Necessity, Pleasure ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... astute Mr. Alden had found himself at a loss to account for some of the exclusive items respecting the doings of Severac Bablon which latterly had been appearing in the Gleaner. By dint of judiciously oiling the tongue of a chatty compositor, he had learned that the unique copy was contributed by Mr. H. T. Sheard. Mr. Oppner had advised him to keep a close watch upon the movements of Mr. Antony Elschild. Although Alden found it hard to credit the idea that the great Elschild family should be in any way associated with the campaign ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... microscopist, clerk stenographer and typewriter, computer in Coast and Geodetic Survey, counter, Government paper mill, industrial teacher, trained nurse, register and receiver's clerk, compositor, public document cataloguer, assistant ethnological librarian, scientific assistant, book typewriter, kindergarten teacher, scientific aid, zoological clerk, Internal-Revenue Service, Philippine Service, topographic draftsman, assistant to ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... before his allies. The little loft behind Randall's printing office was his own territory, where he saw himself already controlling the "Times." Here, under the guidance of the inky apprentice, he had learned to find his way more or less circuitously about the case, and considered himself an expert compositor. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... excuse for 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
... 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
... 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 superfluous consonant into ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... a very galaxy of stars to the bottom of this page; enough to put the compositor out of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... John Lander, who, influenced by a laudable desire to assist in the solution of the geographical problem, was of a very different turn of mind. He was brought up to the profession of a printer, and, as a compositor, had frequent opportunities of enriching his mind with various branches of knowledge, and in time became himself the author of several essays in prose and verse, by no means discreditable to his talents. Being naturally gifted with an ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... simple and ridiculous. 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 blunder just so natural to Goldsmith ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for the press." She, with "wifelike government," kept the money, and heartened me to write, and write I did but with awful sufferings and difficulty, and much destruction of sleep. I think the only person who suffered still more must have been the compositor. Had this packet not come in, and come in when it did, and had the Sine Qua Non not been peremptory and retentive, there are many chances to one I might never have plagued any printer with my bad hand and my endless corrections, and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... an enthusiastic young Irish Roman Catholic, who had 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 him to report the debates in the Assembly during the sessions of Parliament. In 1821 he reported ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... introduction to this volume wherein I have inadequately presented scenes from the great world-drama connected with the Colorado River of the West, but a prolonged illness prevented his doing any writing whatever, and on September 23, 1902, while, indeed, the compositor was setting the last type of the book, a funeral knell sounded at Haven, Maine, his summer home, and the most conspicuous figure we have seen on this stage, the man whose name is as inseparable from the marvellous canyon-river as that of De Soto ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the masses? Notwithstanding the hard fact 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 ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... when the printers were clamouring for copy. Then there was no pause or slumber for him; his attention was concentrated on his varied and difficult subjects till the moment when he rushed with disordered garments to the printer's office. There, seated anywhere—on the corner of a table, at a compositor's frame, or before a foreman's bureau—he became completely absorbed in the colossal labour of reading and correcting his proofs. The first number of the Revue Parisienne appeared on July 25th, 1840; but it was only continued ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... in grand capitals, Mr. Compositor)—Billington returned from Italy! My father, who remembered, I suspect, the beautiful woman more than the accomplished singer, determined to hear again her Mandane; and sorely against my will, I rather think to prevent the chance of my doing mischief at home, forced me to go along with him. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... between the works of man and the universe at large? Let us 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 ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... of the Convent kettledrum, and added the paragraphs we know of, each one accentuated by an explosion of asterisks, and gave the blotty sheets to Young Evans, who combined in his sole person the offices of sub-editor, engineer, chief-compositor, feeder, and devil. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 ...
— The Defence of Stonington (Connecticut) Against a British Squadron, August 9th to 12th, 1814 • J. Hammond Trumbull
... (Artemus Ward), b. in Maine, U.S., worked as a compositor and reporter, and became a highly popular humorous writer, his books being Artemus Ward his Book, A.W. His Panorama, A.W. among the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin |
