Drawbar

“ The Drapers, father and sons, present the rare example in this materialistic age and most materialistic city, of a whole family devoted to literary and scientific pursuits, and working in that harmony which the sincere and loyal pursuit of science is sure to produce. Although we have had occasion to differ with Professor Draper in his philosophical and some of his political deductions, we admire his intellect and attainments, and in the purely scientific order consider him entitled to the highest consideration and respect. ”

“ Draper would be very glad of him here—make it worth his while, and keep him out of harms way, as he is in want of just such a Person, You know his inability to use the Pen—he has lost his two Clerks too, & if I was not capable of assisting, & maintaining his Correspondence for him I know not what he would do, at this juncture. I only fulfil my Duty—and have not the least merit in it—as a good Purvoe that thoroughly understood English, and spelled properly—would answer his Views still better. ”

“ LAURENCE STERNE
TO
DANIEL DRAPER, ESQ.
[Coxwould, 1767?] I OWN it, Sir, that the writing a letter to a gentleman I have not the honour to be known to—a letter likewise upon no kind of business (in the ideas of the world) is a little out of the common course of things—but I’m so myself, and the impulse which makes me take up my pen is out of the common way too, for it arises from the honest pain I should feel in having so great esteem and friendship as I bear for Mrs. Draper—if I did not wish to hope and extend it to Mr. Draper also. I am really, dear sir, in love with your wife ”

“ That much was settled, not by any coherent effort of her brain, but by a co-ordination of every instinct in her, by the action of her whole being, by what her life had made her.
But that certainty brought her small comfort in the blackness of the hour. What hideous world was this in which she had walked unawares until now! Mrs. Draper's jaunty, bright acceptance of it affected her to moral nausea. All the well-chosen words of her sophisticated friend were imbedded in the tissue of her brain like grains of sand in an eyeball. She could not see for very pain. ”

“ Darrow noticed that his hat was gone. He felt around the bench. On the grass he found it. This gave him a grain of comfort. Nothing is more forlorn than your civilized man without a hat. The hat was dry, too; and that was something.
He put it on his wounded head, and felt a tiny flicker of hope revive. A great weariness oppressed him; but he dared not sit down again in the park, to think. His wet, clinging clothes, too, urged him to be moving. Even though his billfold was now gone, and with it the precious scraps of paper, apparently his only clue, he could not feel that everything was lost. ”

“ All the hereditary keenness and intelligence were stamped upon his face at that moment; but the expression had also a large share of the very irony and malice which he had conveyed to his caricature. The drawing itself was wonderfully vigorous and distinct; showing great artistic promise, and done with the rapidity and ease which betrayed practice. Suddenly his father turned, and with as sudden a quickness the boy concealed his tablet in his vest; and the sinister expression of his face smoothed into a timorous smile as his eye encountered Dalibard's. ”

“ For, smashing against the lock, the heavy, shattering blows resounded.
Howls and imprecations in a strange tongue filled the hallway. Darrow cringed an instant, his hawk-face pale as milk, eyes blazing, mouth agape.
Then, with a cry, “By gad! Got it!” his brain riven with inspiration, he snatched at the ribbon of the machine.
Years of work with typewriters had taught him more than mere accuracy and speed.
“This! This! Got to have it!” he panted.
Both hands grabbing, he hauled the ribbon out in great, yard-long loops and coils. The ribbon-spools spun round like mad. ”

“ They took no note of the rare old furniture; of the dark paneled walls; of the color mellowed tapestries. She sat looking at it all blindly. Then her eyes raised themselves a bit. She found herself staring at the picture hung just above the wood carved mantel. The famous picture. The work of the great artist. The picture before which she had stood and hated; and hated. The picture which was the pride and portrait of her father, Daniel Drare. ”

“ Darrell had in his favor the intellect which gives presence of mind; the energy of nerve, which is no more to be seen in the sinew and bone than the fluid which fells can be seen in the jars and the wires; and that superb kind of pride, which, if terror be felt, makes its action impossible, because a disgrace, and bravery a matter of course, simply because it is honor. ”

“ Often the folds of a piece of drapery so delighted him that they are continued for their own sake and float out where there is no wind to support them, or he would develop their intricacies beyond every possibility of conceivable train or other superfluity of real garments; and it is this necessity to be richer and more magnificent than probability permits which brings us to the creator in Dürer ”

“ But should he have failed to reach the high mark at which he has aimed, he hopes, with some degree of confidence, that he has at least succeeded in producing a book which the experienced draughtsman will find valuable as a book of reference, and which the pupil may constantly consult with profit. A want has long been felt by draughtsmen for some work of this kind to which they might refer their pupils in the office, and it may not be presumptive to suppose that the present work has supplied that want. ”

“ In the hands of a master of the figure—of one of those artists to whom the expressiveness and the beauty of the human structure is all in all—drapery is a means of rendering the masses and the movement of the figure more apparent than they would be in the nude. ”

“ DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES, By Irving Bacheller With illustrations by Arthur Keller.
“Darrel, the clock tinker, is a wit, philosopher, and man of mystery. Learned, strong, kindly, dignified, he towers like a giant above the people among whom he lives. It is another tale of the North Country, full of the odor of wood and field. Wit, humor, pathos and high thinking are in this book.”—Boston Transcript. ”

“ DRAPER, one who deals in cloth or textiles generally. The Fr. drap, cloth, from which drapier and Eng. “draper” are derived, is of obscure origin. It is possible that the Low Lat. drappus or trappus (the last form giving the Eng. “trappings”) may be connected with words such as “drub,” Ger. treffen, beat; the original sense would be fulled cloth. “Drab,” dull, pale, brown, is also connected, its first meaning being a cloth of a natural undyed colour. The Drapers’ Company is one of the great livery companies of the city of London. The fraternity is of very early origin. ”

“ As a man will, when trying to readjust his mental processes, Darrow clasped his hands behind him, bent his head, and strolled along a little way, oblivious to all about him. Little he knew that, half a block behind, a husky individual in a gray suit and Panama, with bristly, close-cropped yellow mustache, had slacked his pace at the same moment, and now with sudden interest was studying the shop-window signs, as though looking for some very special place. ”

“ These letters, typewritten with blue ink and in a script font, seemed to spell nothing but the most baffling nonsense.
Several of the fragments of words were not even English in appearance. But Darrow seemed to guess a little of their significance. And quickly he placed them in what he judged to have been something like their original position, before the sheet on which they had been written had been torn to bits, and—so it seemed—flung into a fire of some sort.
“Lots of open fireplaces in all these buildings,” mused Darrow, as he worked. “That proves nothing. ”

“ But I tell you this Draper girl is a person to be reckoned with. She is hard as nails, beautiful as the devil, and I believe her to be perfectly unscrupulous. She is as interested in Dicky as she can be in any one outside herself, and I think she would like to smash things generally just to gratify her own egotism. ”

“ Mr. Spence looked at his watch. “You can’t be in more of a hurry than I am; and I’ve got seven minutes and a half.” He seated himself behind the coffee—tray, lit a cigar, laid his watch on the table, and signed to Draper to resume his place. “No, Millner, don’t you go; I want you both.” He turned to the secretary. “You know that Draper’s given up his Bible Class? I understand it’s not from the pressure of engagements—” Mr. Spence’s narrow lips took an ironic curve under the straight-clipped stubble of his moustache—“it’s on principle, he tells me. He’s principled against doing good!” ”

“ Modern criticism is right in denying that he was a draughtsman, if by draughtsman is meant one deeply preoccupied with form and structure for its own sake. His distinction was to invest the human figure with such forms as should best fit it to play its part in a scheme of monumental composition. The "style" of his draperies, so much and so justly admired, is composition of draperies. ”

“ I am trying my best to love him. But, but"— Darrell turned quickly, and the portrait of his father over the mantelpiece came full upon his sight,—an impressive, a haunting face, —sweet and gentle, yet with the high narrow brow and arched nostril of pride, with restless melancholy eyes, and an expression that revealed the delicacy of intellect, but not its power. There was something forlorn, but imposing, in the whole effigy. As you continued to look at the countenance, the mournful attraction grew upon you. ”

“ The artist or draughtsman is not, however, usually master of the situation; the printer and publisher will use the cheaper methods, to [86] suit which we must adopt, to a certain degree, a conventional manner. If a drawing be seriously studied, it is often surprising how much of the feeling of the draughtsman is conveyed to us through the strokes of his pen or pencil, and it is just this feeling which the Gelatine process preserves in great measure, but which the commoner methods sift out and give us a mere mechanical translation. ”

“ Hie thee and sit with the Draper and mention to him the turband-cloth, saying, The turband I bought of thee I chanced to burn in two places; so I gave it to a certain old woman, to have fine-drawn, and she took it and went away, and I know not her dwelling-place. [498] When thou seest me pass by, rise and lay hold of me, and demand of me the cloth, to the intent that I may arrange her affair with her spouse and that matters go right with thee in her regard.” Accordingly he repaired to the Draper’s shop and sat down by him and asked him, “Thou knowest the turband-cloth I bought of thee?” “Yes.” ”

“ But take an audience from an orator, what is he? He commands the living Public—the Ghost of the Public awes himself.
"Surely once," sighed Darrell, as he gave his blurred pages to the flames—"surely once I had some pittance of the author's talent, and have spent it upon lawsuits."
The author's talent, no doubt, Guy Darrell once had—the author's temperament, never. What is the author's temperament? Too long a task to defined. But without it a man may write a clever book, a useful book, a book that may live a year, ten years, fifty years. ”

“ In the same way a singer trains himself to sing scales, giving every note exactly the same weight and preserving a most mechanical time throughout, so that every note of his voice may be accurately under his control and be equal to the subtlest variations he may afterwards 35want to infuse into it at the dictates of feeling. For how can the draughtsman, who does not know how to draw accurately the cold, commonplace view of an object, hope to give expression to the subtle differences presented by the same thing seen under the excitement of strong feeling? ”

“ It is very fortunate that men do like to march about in ranks and lines, even without any distinguishing apparel. The Drawer has seen hundreds of citizens in a body, going about the country on an excursion, parading through town after town, with no other distinction of dress than a uniform high white hat, who carried joy and delight wherever they went. The good of this display cannot be reckoned in figures. ”

“ Darrow, as he observed her, again felt a detached enjoyment in her pleasure. She was an extraordinary conductor of sensation: she seemed to transmit it physically, in emanations that set the blood dancing in his veins. He had not often had the opportunity of studying the effects of a perfectly fresh impression on so responsive a temperament, and he felt a fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate for his own amusement. ”

“ Does he know who listens yonder? Old members think so,—smile; whisper each other, and glance significantly where Darrell sits.
Sits, as became him, tranquil, respectful, intent, seemingly, perhaps really, unconscious of the sensation he excites. What an eye for an orator! how like the eye in a portrait; it seems to fix on each other eye that seeks it,—steady, fascinating. ”

“ Drawers stopped suddenly.
"There is nothing but a mass of bleeding pulp beneath you."
Drawers started to get off the Griff's back. He staggered erratically. The world began to turn around and round, around and round.
Someone was leading him. He followed blindly. The next he knew he was lying back amid a mass of billowy perfumed cushions. Someone was forcing a sweet, golden liquid between his lips. He drank greedily, some of the liquid spilling down his shirt. He wiped his lips with his hand and settled back, relaxed.
Through half-closed eyelids he peered out at the small golden people. ”

“ I’ve drilled the men and shown the people how to stack their oats better; and I’ve brought in those tinware rifles from Ghorband—but I know what you’re driving at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed that way.’
“‘There’s another thing too,’ says Dravot, walking up and down. ‘The winter’s coming, and these people won’t be giving much trouble, and if they do we can’t move about. I want a wife.’
“‘For Gord’s sake leave the women alone!’ I says. ‘We’ve both got all the work we can, though I am a fool. ”