"Compositor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... representing sounds, like European alphabets, it 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 ...
— Japan • David Murray
... 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 the type itself is a manufactured ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... 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
... The word "typographer" is used to differentiate between the compositor and the printer, the latter being the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... stipulated 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 transcribed upon one ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... The 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, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... unsolicited about this time, I might have failed in procuring the employment which I sought. An ingenious self-taught mechanic—the late Mr. John Mackay Wilson of Berwick-on-Tweed—after making good his upward way from his original place at the compositor's frame, to the editorship of a provincial paper, started, in the beginning of 1835, a weekly periodical, consisting of "Border Tales," which, as he possessed the story-telling ability, met with considerable success. He did not live, however, to complete the first yearly volume; the forty-ninth ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... after he closed that the real business of the evening began." Then followed speeches and the introduction of resolutions by "Mr. Howell, a bricklayer ... Mr. Odgers, a shoemaker ... Mr. Mantz, a compositor ... Mr. Cremer, a joiner, who was bitter against Lord Palmerston ... Mr. Conolly, a mason...." and other labouring men, all asserting "that the success of free institutions in America was a political question of deep consequence in England and that they would not tolerate ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... With his characteristic energy he set to work, and having invented an alphabet of a more simple kind, he with his penknife cut the types, and formed the letters from musket bullets; he constructed a rude sort of press; and aided by Mrs. E. as compositor, he at length succeeded in printing prayers, and hymns, and passages of Scripture for the use of the Indians. Finding their object in detaining the press thus baffled, the Governor and Committee deemed it expedient to forward it; but with the express stipulation, that ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 wavered ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... but he lost his position because of an error made by a careless compositor in a marble-yard. He ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... last 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
... receiving a common-school 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 ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... employed by 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 of doggrel verse up to massy quartos filled with Hebrew quotations. It ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... furthest extreme in each direction. It was a circular city, made mostly of the same materials as the wall and temple, which were a plain, silvery stone; a dark rock with inherent patterns; a mixture of cobblestone and a colorful compositor rock; and a vast array of metals, everything from brass to silver to platinum. Made in an ancient style, the buildings were tall, the average being what was equivalent to at least a dozen or two stories in the pre-desolation times, and they were close together, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... permit me 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
... was a compositor—a tall, lank, hollow-eyed man with a bad cough. His mother was a woman of the people, angular and taciturn. Jonas himself was pale ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... 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 ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... Douay in 1627, and translated soon after by Father Richard Thimbleby, an English member of the Society of Jesus. Says Dr. Anderdon in his preface: "The alterations ventured upon in this reprint, consist chiefly in the mode of punctuation, which, being probably left to a French compositor, are anomalous, and often perplexing. Some expressions, so obsolete as to prevent the sense being clear, and in the same degree lessening the value of the book to the general reader, have been exchanged for others in more common use.... Let us earnestly hope that, at this moment, on ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... correct. The 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
... 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 ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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
... sometimes thought 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 ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... numbers of 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 are called the types. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with the history of this book may give the reader some idea of the hopes of an American author, in the first quarter of the present century. As the second volume was slowly printing, from manuscript that was barely dry when it went into the compositor's hands, the publisher intimated that the work might grow to a length that would consume the profits. To set his mind at rest, the last chapter was actually written, printed, and paged, several weeks before the chapters which ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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; the prophet Isaiah, telling of the golden days which are to come, when the voice of weeping ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... he. "This was the proper shop 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. ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... came in characters bold as John Hancock's, and in chirography as small and neat as the writing of Charlotte Bronte, whose manuscript the compositor is said to have deciphered with the aid of a magnifying glass; and between these extremes were a dozen or more styles as varied and marked as one could wish. The purport of these messages, which were written rather quickly, ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... 5-1/2, 6, 7, 8 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. printed &c. v.; in type; typographical ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 because of the greater ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... men come out best. The worst show is made by idle and luxurious grandees. Authors occupy a middle position, and in Froude's own books "chapter after chapter vanished away, leaving the paper clean as if no compositor had ever laboured in setting type for it. Pale and illegible became the fine-sounding paragraphs on which I had secretly prided myself. A few passages, however, survived here and there at long intervals. They were those on which I had laboured least and had almost forgotten, or those, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... poor wretch, having threatened to apply the lex talionis to M. Bonaparte, had been arrested and sent to Brest, on his way to Cayenne. Almost all the persons assembled in the wine-shop held monarchical opinions, and I saw only two, a compositor named Meunier, who had formerly worked on the Reforme, and a friend of his, who declared themselves to be Republicans. About four o'clock, I left ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... that, and Big James had enough finesse and enough 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 him of his impending battle and of the complex forces marshalled ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... 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 poor wretches to ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... in that wretched little printing-office the compositor had made "Brickell" out of Brackett, and as he was his own proof-reader, the ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... 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 general ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 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 ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... p.494.).—The word modern, instead of moderate, in my editions of Shakspeare, is a printer's error, which shall be corrected in the edition I am now publishing. To a person unfamiliar with printing, it might appear impossible that any compositor, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... Carpenter—the former 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 ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... disgraced them farther. If occasion offered she might be married to a 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. He ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... is somewhat characteristic of the feelings which animated the ruling powers of the day with respect to the mass of people who were not within the sacred pale. When Dr. Home gave up the publication of the Gazette, in whose office Collins had been for some time a compositor, the latter applied for the position, and was informed that 'the office would be given to ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... 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 ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... penetration), I have discovered a dash that might be 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
... Johnson[992]. When a proof-sheet of one of his works was brought to him, he found fault with the mode in which a part of it was arranged, refused to read it, and in a passion[993] desired that the compositor[994] might be sent to him. The compositor was Mr. Manning, a decent sensible man, who had composed about one half of his Dictionary, when in Mr. Strahan's printing-house; and a great part of his Lives of the Poets, when in that of Mr. Nichols; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... that not the business of the author, the editor, and the proofreader? Strictly speaking, yes, but authors generally neglect punctuation, copy is not usually carefully edited before going to the compositor, and proofreader's corrections are expensive. It is therefore important that the compositor should be intelligent about punctuation, whether he works in a large ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... 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 dismay ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... "L'Insecte," in addition to the historical works for which he is chiefly known. As a 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 ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... twenty-five years' penal servitude; but O'Reilly survived it all to become a brilliant man of letters and make the Boston Pilot one of the most influential Irish and Catholic newspapers in the United States. Ford, who had served his apprenticeship as a compositor in the office of William Lloyd Garrison at Boston, founded the Irish World in 1870. This newspaper gave powerful aid to the Land League. A special issue of 1,650,000 copies of the Irish World was printed on January 11, 1879, for circulation in Ireland; and money to ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... description 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, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 takes the place of the deceased author. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Raleigh Typographical Union, No. 194, 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 to the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... prospect of being served with a summons made a good 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
... 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 at ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... Faustus was Servant, or Journeyman, or Compositor, or what you please to call it, to Koster of Harlem, the first inventor of Printing; and having printed the Psalter, sold them at Paris as Manuscripts; because as such they yielded ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Mr. Charles 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, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... that will do, now sit down and let us converse. I often have wanted a companion. As for an amanuensis that is only a nominal task, I write as fast as most people, and I cannot follow my ideas, let me scribble for life, as I may say; and as for my writing being illegible, that's the compositor's concern not mine. It's his business to make it out, and therefore I never have mine copied. But I wanted a beautiful companion and friend—I wouldn't have an ugly one for the world, she would do me as much harm as you will ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... singular circumstance, 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 been obliged ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... distance from Preston to Leeds, had found employment in the small printing office in which the Leeds Mercury was produced. Edward Baines, the first, was undoubtedly a man of great ability and remarkable character. Very soon after he began his humble work as a compositor in Leeds he attracted the attention not only of his employer, but of some of the gentry of the town. He was seen to be a person of uncommon intelligence, strict integrity, and distinct political sagacity. The Leeds Mercury, at the close of the eighteenth century, was still ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... 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 law to serve ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... 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
... entered the office of the Golden Era as a compositor, but soon began to write articles for the paper. These attracted favorable notice and he was ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me introduce you to 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 ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... 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 him, and at the age of sixteen he wrote anonymous ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... character of the Southern darkey of the present day. They are full of humor and entertainment, and absolutely true to life both as to the incidents related, and the language used. The latter is so true, in fact, that our compositor who set the type for the book, said that he had never before seen anything like the ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... 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
... 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 regard ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... early in 1860 and found work on the "Golden Era," at first as compositor and soon as writer. In May, 1864, he left the "Golden Era" and joined others in starting "The Californian." Two months later he was made editor of the new "Overland Monthly." The second number contained "The Luck of Roaring Camp." It attracted wide attention as a new note. ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... than it debased the sufferer. Thus, at Hobart Town, men, for mere faults, have been sentenced to exposure and the scourge, in the view of hundreds: the flagellator extinguished the last feeling of the man, and roused the temper of the demon. An old compositor, within a month of his freedom, was charged with some trifling breach of convict discipline, and though the father of grown up children, was ordered by a chief police magistrate, this cruel disgrace. He is dead—and his oppressor is dead! Such cases were not uncommon, but they are past, and ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... 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 Holte Bracebridge, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... old days, was a sort of tramp printer ... clever, but with all his ability in him unexpressed ... he was always down and out ... and drink! It verged on dipsomania. He never held a job long ... though he was a good compositor, he was always on the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... 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 ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... send 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, ...
— 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
... was not forthcoming. The Flag had to be machined, dried, folded, and a number of copies 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 ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 a book-form. By ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... with a laudable anxiety for our success, has communicated the following pathetic story. As a specimen of stenotypography, or compositor's short-hand, we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 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
... a time the words become so impressed upon the lower nerve-centres that we may read on when our attention is directed to some other thing. Thus, often we read aloud and are unconscious of what we have read, precisely as the compositor habitually sets up pages of manuscript without the faintest idea of what it is all about. This law of habitual action applies not only to the lower nerve-centres in their healthy condition, but with equal force in disease. It is notorious that one of the great difficulties ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... 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 the Count and the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... 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 is spoken of by David Hume as the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... 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 ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... Benjamin ran away, going first to New York, and thence to Philadelphia, 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 from which he published "The Pennsylvania Gazette," to which he contributed ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... down, man. I am complimenting you. Haven't you a place as office boy, compositor, or something ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... about half a dozen of them: Moretus, Theophilus, Harpalus, Eratosthenes, Werner, and Piccolomini," answered Barbican as ready as a schoolboy reciting his lesson, and pointing them out on the map as quickly as a compositor distributing his type. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... 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 forms of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... any editions—indeed, no compositor's finger has up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch the fancy of a slang-loving ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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" from the printers as soon as he began ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... newspaper—the Dry Bottom Kicker. It was quite a recent venture; I believe it appeared about a dozen times—intermittently. Ostensibly it was a weekly, but in reality it was printed at those times when your father's affliction sat least heavily upon him. He used to hire a compositor from Las Vegas to set the type,—a man named Potter—a worthless sort of fellow, but a genius in his way—when sober. I suspect that much of the matter that went into the Kicker emanated from ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to 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, and the libraries. He was still acquiring education, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... written popular verses under the name of the "Boston Bard" while a compositor in the office of the Village Record, at West Chester, Pa., came to Philadelphia in 1821 and began a literary paper, which he called the Bee. Not more than two hundred subscribers were secured, and Coffin ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... right also in making an exception of such abnormal forms as the poet 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 ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... all over France to get up free institutions for the 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
... the uplift of 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 engaged in this noble work, most of them doing so at ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... happened was this. 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, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... 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 exuberant imagination, his descriptions ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... m., rival. 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. comun, ordinary, common; standard. comunicacion, ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... 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
... cooks, laundresses, general 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 year, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... of the celebrated printers Didot, at whose office he was noticed by David Sechard, who took him to Angouleme and employed him in his own shop, where Cerizet performed triple duties of form-maker, compositor and proof-reader. Presently he betrayed his master, and by leaguing with the Cointet Brothers, rivals of David Sechard, he obtained possession of his property. [Lost Illusions.] Following this he was an actor in the provinces; managed a Liberal paper during ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... same style and by the same hand as in the De duobus amantibus. Other capitals and paragraph-marks in red and blue alternately. Initial-strokes in yellow. At the bottom of fol. 29^a a line accidentally dropped by the compositor is supplied in manuscript by a contemporary hand, viz., "non te uolunt. Quidam uero potentes sunt! ac ex." Both the recto and the verso of the leaf have the full complement of 23 lines but there is a hiatus in the text. The copies in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and the Bibliotheque ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... willing 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.
... arose when he found the Brahmin, who was in the book-binding and compositor department, working one day in the same ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... blessing of God I have surmounted all my troubles and difficulties, I will tell, and were I not a Christian I should be proud to tell, what I have been engaged upon and accomplished during the last ten weeks. I have been working in the printing-office, as a common compositor, between ten and thirteen hours every day during that period; the result of this is that St Matthew's Gospel, printed from such a copy as I believe nothing was ever printed from before, has been brought out in the Manchu language; two rude Esthonian peasants, who previously ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... 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 far succeeded that after a year and a half I sold out, clearing $1200. The paper, ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... printers I found poorly qualified for their business. Bradford had not been bred to it, and was very illiterate; and Keimer, tho' something of a scholar, was a mere compositor, knowing nothing of presswork. He had been one of the French prophets,[29] 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 ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... deputy tax-collector, and druggist's assistant; and had risen from "printer's devil" to assistant editor of a country newspaper. In 1859 he was back in San Francisco, utilizing the trade he had picked up, as a compositor on The Golden Era. To this he contributed poems and local sketches that soon led to his appointment as assistant editor. His writings made him friends, one of whom, Thomas Starr King, in 1864, obtained for him ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... for the Anglo-Saxon sign for th, which, 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,) we find Francischina, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... your compositor has "misused the queen's press most damnably" in the quotation from Coriolanus prefixed to the second canto, where he converts the "Great Toe of the Assembly" into its "Great Foe." Rap his knuckles with your crutch, old Gentleman; and tell him, too, that the "Shawstone's party" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... power of arrangement, which is necessary for an extended poem, is a modification of the same talent;—being to poetry what method is to logic. Besides these qualifications, poetical compositions requires that command of language which is the mere effect of practice. The poet is a compositor; words are his types; he must have them within reach, and in unlimited abundance. Hence the need of careful labour to the accomplished poet—not in order that his diction may attract, but that language may ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various |
