The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1866-09-05
The Printer and His TYNE,

The following beautiful extract is from the
pen of Benz. F. Taylor, the printer poet:
Perhaps there is no department of enter
prise whose details are less understood by in
telligent people than the ''art preservativen
the achievement of types.
Every day their life long, they are accus.
toned 10 read the newspaper, and hnd fault
with its statements, its looks; to plume them.
selves upon the discovery of some roguish
and acrobatic type that gets into frolic and
stands upon its head; or OF some waste letter
or two in it-but of the process by which
the newspaper is made, of the myriads Of
motions and the thousands Of pieces necessary
to its composition, they know little, and think
less.
They imagine they discourse of wonder
indeed, when they speak of the fair white
carpet woven for thought to walk on, of the
rags that futtered on the back Of the beggar
yesterday.
But there is something more wonderful
snii, When eiook Of the hundred and fifty
two little boxes, somewhat shaded with the
touch of inky fingers, that compose the print
er's 'case,' noiseless, except the clicking Of
the type, as one by one they take their places
in the growing line-we think we have found
the marvel of the heart.
We think how many fancies in fragments
there are in the boxes, how many atoms Of
poetry and eloquence the printer can make
here and there, if he had only little chart TO
work by how many facts in q small hand
FULL how much truth in chaos,
How he picks IN the scattered elements
until he holds iAhis hand a stanza OF ',0ray' {
Elegy,n or mopody upon Grimes, "All
Buttoned up Before Now he ''sets' "a
puppy missing" aud now Paradise Lost
lie arrays bride IN small caps, and a SON
net in 'nonparel;" he ANNOUNCES the Ian
gushing ''live" in one sentence-transposes
the words and depores the days that are few
and s'eyil, in the next.
poor jest tricks its way slowly into the
printers hand, like q clock just running
the line letter by letter. We fancy We can
tell the difference by hearing by the ear,
but perhaps not.
The types that told wedding yesterday
announce burial to morrow-pe perhaps in
the self-same letters.
They are the elements to make world of
-.h 1e .ypes are, ,-c. 'r..a something in
II as beautiful as spirits, as rich as summer,
and as grand as autumn flowers, that frost
can not wilt Fruit that shall ripen for ALI
Gms
The newspaper has become the log-book
Of the age. 1t tells at what rate the world is
running; we cannot find out the reckoning"
without II.
True, the green grocer may bundle up a
pound OF candles in our last expressed
thoughts, but it is only coming to base uses,
something that is done times innumerable.
We console ourselves by thinking that one
can make of that newspaper what be cannot
make Of living aaks-a bridge for time, that
he can fling over the chasm of dead years
and walk safely back upon the shadowy sea
into The far past. 1 he singer shall not end
his song, nor the soul be eloquent no more.
The realm of the press ia enchanted ground.
Sometimes the editor has the happiness of
knowing that he has defended the right, ex>
posed the wrong protected the weak that he
has given utterance to a sentiment that had
cheered somebody's hour, made somebody
happier, kinded smile upon a sad face or a
hone On heavy heart.
He may meet with that sentiment many
years after, it may have lost all charms of its
paternity, bat he feels affection for it. He
welcomes it as long absent child. lie reads
it as for the FIRST time, and wonders ii, indeed
he wrote II, for he has changed since then.
Perhaps he could not give utterance to the
sentiment now-perhaps lie would not il he
could.
II seems like the voice of his former self
calling to his parents, and there is something
mournful in his tone. He begins to think :
to remember why be wrote it, who were his
readers then, and how much he has changed.
So he muses., -uutil he finds himself wonder
ing if that thought of his will continue to float
after lie is dead, and whether he is really
looking upon something that will survive him.
Aud then comes the sweet consciousness that
there is nothing in the sentence that he could
wish unwritten-that is better part Of him
rhre1 81 IN ne
shall leave behind him when he joins the
'sinnumerahle caravan and takes his place
in the silent halls Of death.