Linus

“ Yet if Linus had confined his statement to living things, and had said that one sole energy governed all plants and animals, he would have come near both to being intelligible and true. For if, as we now believe, all animals and plants are descended from a single cell, they must be considered as cousins to one another, and as forming a single tree-like animal, every individual plant or animal of which is as truly one and the same person with the primordial cell as the oak a thousand years old is one and the same plant with the acorn out of which it has grown. ”

“ Even companies that once laughed it off as software socialism have come around to recognize the benefits. Linux, the Unix-like kernel developed by Finnish college student Linus Torvalds in 1991, is licensed under the GPL, as are many of the world's most popular programming tools: GNU Emacs, the GNU Debugger, the GNU C Compiler, etc. Together, these tools form the components of a free software operating system developed, nurtured, and owned by the worldwide hacker community. ”

“ And the fingers continued their rapid movement over the typewriter keyboard.
Incredulously Lin reached out and tried to remove the skullcap. It wouldn't budge, and was as unyieldingly hard as the face.
"A robot!" The exclamation escaped Lin's lips in a hoarse whisper. "Or—a statue?"
In desperation he seized one of the man's arms at the elbow and tried to interrupt the smooth flow of movement. All his strength couldn't vary the motion of that arm enough to cause a finger to miss a key on the typewriter.
"Not a millionth of an inch of play in the joints!" ”

“ Passing each busy prospector, Lin would read on every broad, upturned pair of overalls the same label, “Levi Strauss, No. 2,” with a picture of two lusty horses hitched to one of these garments and vainly struggling to split them asunder. Lin remembered he was wearing a label just like that too, and when he considered all things he laughed to himself. Then, having stretched the ache out of his long legs, he would return to his ditch. As autumn wore on, his feet grew cold in the mushy gravel they were sunk in. He beat off the sand that had stiffened on his boots, and hated Obo, Nevada. ”

“ The clack of the typewriter continued without pause.
Lin hesitated a moment, then approached the man slowly, debating whether he should speak to him again or wait until he paused to rest. The man must not be doing so well with his writing, to toss a finished page into the fire so casually.
Lin's lips quirked into a smile. He would sneak up and glance over the man's shoulder and read what he was typing. ”

“ But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in you somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come to know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and you just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so comic and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon. Say, Lin, what made yus do that, anyway?”
“I can't hardly say,” said the cow-puncher. “Only noticing him so turruble anxious to quit me—well, a man acts without thinking.”
“You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. ”

“ Lin saw them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations of the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with that undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal human face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's brooding eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. ”

“ For he had first known Lin, the boy of nineteen, supreme in length of limb and recklessness, breaking horses and feeling for an early mustache. Next, when the mustache was nearly accomplished, he had mended the boy’s badly broken thigh at Drybone. His skill (and Lin’s spotless health) had wrought so swift a healing that the surgeon overflowed with the pride of science, and over the bandages would explain the human body technically to his wild-eyed and flattered patient. Thus young Lin heard all about tibia, and comminuted, and other glorious new words, and when sleepless would rehearse them. ”

“ The stakes at this point fell from his pocket, which he did not notice. But the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
"Who are yu', anyway—when yu' ain't drunk?" demanded Lin.
"He's as good a man as you, and better," snorted the guardian angel. "Give him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find."
"Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska—" Lin began.
"No, no," corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew—"Jim."
"Good-by, gentlemen," said the rain-maker. "That's the west-bound. I'm perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at Salt Lake City." ”

“ The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
“Good-bye and good luck to you,” continued the bishop, giving his hand to Lin. “And look here—don't you think you might leave that 'getting full' out of your plans?”
Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. “I don't guess I can, sir,” he said. “I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see,” he added.
“That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had enough. Try that. You're man enough—and come and see me whenever we're in the same place.”
He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. ”

“ The sun beats down as on a roof of zinc, fierce and dull. Not a drop of water to a mile of sand. The mean ash-dump landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere, a spot of mange. No portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry, unimportant ugliness.
There is gold in Nevada, but Lin and Honey did not find it. Prospecting of the sort they did, besides proving unfruitful, is not comfortable. Now and again, losing patience, Lin would leave his work and stalk about and gaze down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water. ”

“ The sennerin looked down modestly when Will praised her singing. “Ah, you should just hear Linnet!” she cried, in unaffected self-depreciation.
“And who’s Linnet?” Will asked, smiling at the girl’s perfect frankness.
“Oh, she’s one of Herr Hausberger’s cow-girls,” the sennerin answered, with a little shake of her saucy head. “But you needn’t ask her; she’s a great deal too shy; she won’t give you a chance; she never sings before strangers.” ”

“ Linnæus kissed the hand of the dying man, who insisted on kissing the hand of Linnæus in return, pronouncing him the greater genius, of whom the world should expect and receive more.
Linnæus, the celebrated founder of a new science, returned home as an unknown man. His ability as a physician, acquired at the University of Leyden, and his growing continental fame soon made him distinguished. In 1741 he was appointed professor of medicine at Upsala, but changed chairs with the professor of botany. ”

“ The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean; for everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her first wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin was trying to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our benefactors at sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the second husband off. The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish, tearful, and affectionate; she turned furiously at bay, his guardian angel, indifferent to the onlooking crowd, and hurling righteous defiance at Lin. ”

“ In the morning, after Linnet had gulped down the coffee and roll that seemed to half choke her, she would stroll up the hill behind the village inn, and sit on the boulders, just above the belt of pine wood, where she had sat long ago hand in hand with Will Deverill. The village children sometimes came and gazed at her, and whispered to one another in an awestruck undertone how this was Lina Telser, who once minded cows in a châlet on the Alps, and who was now the Casalmonte, a great, rich singer in England, with diamonds in her box, and grand rings on her fingers. ”

“ How strangely human feelings and ideas differ! He himself had never forgotten the beautiful alp-girl with the divine voice; in the midst of London drawing-rooms he never ceased to miss her; while Franz Lindner thought he had left Linnet far, far behind, since he became acquainted with those higher and nobler types, the music-hall stars of the London Pavilion! “There’s no accounting for tastes,” people say; oh, most inept of proverbs! surely it’s easy for anyone to account for the reasons which made Linnet appear so different now in Franz Lindner’s eyes and in her English poet’s. ”

“ Dorothy said. "If it weren't for the fact that my ribs were definitely broken, and I saw that nasty cut on my cheek...."
"You know there's no other explanation," Lin said.
"But how could writing on a piece of paper form reality?" she objected. "It just can't!"
"But it does," Lin said. "What is reality? Scientists have been trying to find out since time began. There could be different kinds of reality. Ours could be subject to the minds of beings on another plane of it. This robot could sit there and write out things that happen, and make them happen here. It has to be that." ”

“ Herr Will’s so kind and good, no mortal on earth can refuse him anything. He’s a heretic, to be sure, but, O Philippina, there’s no Catholic like him! . . . Besides,” she added, after a pause, rearranging the folds in the Beggar Maid’s dress with pretended pre-occupation, “I prayed Our Lady that she might soften the Archbishop’s heart; and Our Lady heard my prayer; she always hears me.”
As she spoke, a great pang passed suddenly through her bosom: Our Lady had answered that prayer; would she answer the other one? Would she grant Linnet’s wish to love Will Deverill less? ”

“ In 1724, young Linnæus entered the upper college or gymnasium at Wexio, where his deficiencies in classical attainments were looked upon with less indulgence. The admonitions of his teachers were contemned; the passion inspired by nature still prevailed; and complaints were made to his father, who, finding him averse to the study of divinity, and perhaps believing him incapable of acquiring literary knowledge, resolved to bind him apprentice to a shoemaker. ”

“ The man's hand seized it and jerked it from the machine, dropping it into the flame in the wire wastebasket.
And from some automatic feed a new sheet came into view on the platen, and the man continued his typing, his fingers moving with great rapidity and without letup.
Lin straightened and stepped back a bit so as not to startle the man. He coughed loudly and said, "Hello, there."
The rhythm of the man's typing didn't vary. He gave no indication of having heard.
Slightly annoyed, Lin reached out and tapped him firmly on the shoulder. Still no result. ”

“ Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still further refined his clay) , have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look so winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does not prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn. ”

“ The great naturalist of the eighteenth century, Carl von Linné, known academically as Carolus Linnæus, was the early associate and close friend of Artedi, and from Artedi he obtained practically all his knowledge of fishes. Linnæus, professor in the University of Upsala and for a time its rector, primarily a botanist, was a man of wonderful erudition, and his great strength lay in his skill in the orderly arrangement of things. ”

“ Florian and Philippina went off by themselves after awhile among the ruins of the ramparts. Linnet was left alone with Will again by the windows of the Rittersaal. All this historical talk had inflamed her eager mind with vague hopes and possibilities. Why should not she too know? Why should not she too be fit for him, like the fair-haired lady? ”

“ The two companions pursued their favourite studies with an honourable spirit of emulation. They divided the kingdoms and provinces of nature between them, and while Linnæus yielded the palm to Artedi in ichthyology (the science of fish) , the latter acknowledged Linnæus to be his superior in entomology, or that of insects. Each kept his discoveries to himself, though for no great length of time, since not a day passed without one surprising the other by narrating some new fact, so that emulation produced mutual industry of research, and stimulated each to new exertions. ”

“ I am told on good authority that out of about 2,000 offices in the United Kingdom only about six have not at least one Linotype machine. This Linotype machine is probably the most ingenious mechanism ever planned and, with the exception of a few calculating machines, resembles the human brain more than any other. The Linotype is not content to assemble made types, but it makes them line by line as they are required. It is constituted of a keyboard actuating a magazine143 containing matrices, or letter-moulds in intaglio, together with a casting mechanism. ”

“ Herr Andreas told me you had written this piece for Linnet; but one hardly knows you again, you’ve grown so much older⁠—⁠and better dressed⁠—⁠and richer! And, Dear Frau! in the Tyrol, you wore no beard and whiskers!”
Will turned in surprise. It was a minute, even so, before he quite recognised the stalwart speaker. It was Philippina, still good-humoured and buxom and garrulous as of old; but, oh, great heavens, how much changed from the brown-faced sennerin with the rough woollen petticoat who had offered them milk, all frothy from the cow, in the stoneware mug on the hillside at St Valentin! ”