Filling

“ One is tempted to let fancy play around the bald facts, and to watch the artisan, wearily cutting the same letters again and again into the wood block, until he bethinks himself,—a half-dozen others likewise: “Why cannot I saw off the lettering cut on another block, cut it up, word by word, or, better yet, letter by letter, then put the letters together in words and sentences as I need them, and use them with my newly cut picture? ”

“ A fair white sheet with handsomely written words will be more welcome to any reader than a blotted, bedaubed page covered with erasures and dirt, even if the matter in each be of equal value and interest. Erasures, blots, interlineations always spoil the beauty of any letter. ”

“ The tongue writes on the soul, as the hand on paper. That which we hear, is conveyed to us immediately and in the first instance, from the mind of him from whom the instruction proceeds; that which we read, is the copy of a copy. ”

“ FINISH. But the enquiry is naturally made, “if deception is undesirable, should the artist pause before he has brought his work to a complete finish?” Finish is not dependent upon putting in [pg 208] everything which nature contains, else would art not be a matter of selection. Finish, though interpreted singularly by different artists as to degree, is universally understood to mean the same thing. Finish is the expression of the true relations of objects or of the parts of one object. When the true relations or values of shade and color are rendered the work is complete. ”

“ If we may be pardoned for using a homely and commonplace illustration we would say that the idea may be grasped by the illustration of boiling an egg, whereby the fluid "white" and "yolk" becomes solid and real. Also the use of a shaving brush by a man, by which the thin lather is gradually worked up into a rich, thick, creamy mass, is an illustration. ”

“ Depend upon it, dear reader, your reading and writing, your sums and your tables, nay, even the terrible dog’s-eared grammar, are nothing to what the smallest needle must go through before it is fit to appear in the world! ”

“ FULLING, is the art of cleansing, scouring, and pressing cloths, stuffs, and stockings, to render them stronger, closer, and firmer: it is also sometimes called milling.
The fulling of cloths, &c. is performed by a kind of water-mill, thence called a fulling, or scouring-mill.—Without describing the mechanism of this manufacturing process, we cannot omit to remark that urine is sometimes employed, as well as soap and fullers'-earth, to prepare the stuffs for receiving the first impressions of the pestle. ”

“ As for plaining, smoothing and spreading, I do not mean so much artificial plaining and spreading; as for example, when a piece of gold is beaten into a thin plate, and a board is made plain and smooth by a Joyners tool, or a napkin folded up is spread plain and even, although, when you observe these arts, you may judge somewhat of the nature of natural dilations; for a folded cloth is fuller of creases then when plain, and the beating of a thin plate is like to the motion of dilation, which is to spread out, and the forme of rarifying is thinning and extending. ”

“ Then I remembered how I used to read my chapters, my mind half the time on something else, most always in a hurry, thinking it was time I was skimming my milk or at my baking, and wondering whether I should bake apple pies or pumpkin that day; think of it! ”

“ Looking through the pages he found the recipe he wanted and said: "I must have a gill of water from a dark well."
"What kind of a well is that, sir?" asked the boy.
"One where the light of day never penetrates. ”

“ When you have succeeded, to any moderate extent, in doing this, your hand will have begun to receive the power of executing a serene and dignified flourish instead of a vulgar ‘dash.’ And you may also begin to understand that the word ‘flourish’ itself, as applied to writing, means the springing of its lines into floral exuberance,—therefore, strong procession and growth, which must be in a spiral line, for the stems of plants [59] are always spirals. ”

“ One successful teacher conducts the recitation with books open, requiring her pupils to cover the correct sentences with a strip of paper while they explain and correct the faults in the incorrect sentences. The writer's practice is to paste the faulty sentences on cards of convenient size and thickness—the arrangement of columns is such that the sentences can all be cut from one old book—and to distribute them among eight or ten pupils at the beginning of the recitation hour. ”

“ This rather resembles the famous egg in which a number of smaller and smaller eggs were enclosed. For this beautiful package forming as a whole the entire conjugation of the verb contains the booklets of the different moods, which in their turn contain the smaller booklets of the tenses. The orderly enumeration of the moods and tenses, together with the pronouns which serve to show the order of the verb forms, allows the child to conjugate the entire verb by himself and to study the classification of the different forms that make it up. ”

“ I try to take in the scene before me with my eye—to seize all its beauties, and on the spot I love to cover a whole sheet with scratches, which represent nothing exactly, but which, nevertheless, possess an infinite value in my eyes, as serving to remind me of the happy moment, whose bliss even this bungling exercise could not mar. ”

“ If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature are just like this. She is a vast plenum in which our attention draws capricious lines in innumerable directions. ”

“ If I may venture to recommend one study in particular, for its invigorating influence, I would name the practice of frequent composition. She who writes daily, whether it be in her journal, or essays on indifferent subjects, or even good letters, will, in addition to many other benefits of this practice, strengthen in herself greatly the habit of connected and profitable thought. ”

“ Here, for instance, is the substance which is found everywhere, and everywhere the same—in the grass as in the egg, in your blood as in turnip-juice! And with this one sole substance which it has pleased the great Creator to throw broadcast into everything you eat, He has fashioned all the thousand portions of your frame, diverse and delicate as they are ”

“ A sett is a piece placed upon the head of a pile for striking upon, when the pile can not be reached by the weight or hammer.
Set—Sit. Blunders in the use of these words are amongst the most common we have. Set, as we shall first consider it, is a transitive verb, or one in which the action passes over to an object. Present tense, set; imperfect tense and past participle, set; present participle, setting. Sit is an intransitive verb, or one which has no object after it. ”

“ Anon some wrinkled, fidgety, cogitative being in human form would add a new volume to some slope or tower of the monstrous omni-patulent mass, or some sharp-glancing youth, with teeth set unevenly on edge, would pull out a volume, look greedily and half-believingly for a few moments, return it, and slink away. ”

“ It is not always necessary that the finishing be done in blind first. I have explained it, and advocate its being so worked first as easier for a learner. One who is accustomed to finishing finds that a few lines marked previously with a folding-stick is all that is required. ”

“ All those acute feelings which attend the disorganization, or tendency toward disorganization, 31 of the several parts of our frame, seem entirely distinct from the feelings of touch. Even in the case of cutting, or laceration, the mere touch of the knife or other instrument is one feeling, the pain of the cut, or laceration, another feeling, as much as, in the mouth, the touch of the sugar is one feeling, the sweetness of it another. ”

“ In conclusion, the concentration, the diffusion, or the contrast of light and shade, is best understood from a few blots made from the pictures of those great masters, who strike us as having excelled most in this department of the art, carefully preserving their arrangements, and applying them to our own compositions, until we feel and think like them. ”

“ Make your lines rather suggestively than literally, and the larger your brushes the finer your work will be; for if we look at nature we cannot find lines, or if there seem lines they are formed by many cross-divisions so minute and filled with gradations that the finest sable-hair is like rope-work beside them. ”

“ Delicate and clean-made is the little trench that goeth from thy mouth to thy lips, and sweet it is, and there is more might in it than in sweet words spoken. Thy lips they are of the finest fashion, yet rather thin than full ”

“ No greater pity can exist than for the pale student who wrinkles her brow—it usually is her brow—and attempts to make of notes a complete transcription of a lecture or a book, with each comma and every letter in proper sequence joined—only to pack the notes away in a box in the attic—or perhaps burn them! A builder who should have too meticulous care for his scaffolding is in danger of never seeing his building completed. ”

“ Am I pleading, then, for mere technique? No. As long as there are any signs of technique at all, the picture is unfinished. What is finish? A picture is finished when all traces of work, and of the means employed to bring about the result, have disappeared. ”

“ Sleek, unwieldy porkers would be too high-sounding an expression for you to use ordinarily, but it is in tone with the rest of the description. In the repose and abundance of their pens is much better than the words substituted above. It is shorter and stronger. It uses instead of the verb reposing and the adjective abundant the nouns repose and abundance, and makes these the principal words in the phrase. Repose and abundance are thus made the striking features of the pen. Arrange the ninth sentence in as many ways as possible and tell which way you prefer. ”

“ If the work should be immediately finished, the consequences are that in a few hours all the marks and scratches of the paper, etc., will be discernible, and the polished surface will present a very imperfect appearance, although looking perfect when first finished. ”

“ This change of the subjective to the objective may be illustrated by the simplest sensations. What we call sweet or sour, red or yellow, no one will deny to be purely subjective. We can only say, I have such or such a sensation. But others claim also to have the sensation of sweet or sour, and the rest. ”

“ In these illustrations, we have seen more of nature's training than of her pruning; but it must be remembered that training is one of the objects, and indeed, a leading element of pruning, and is very properly a matter for our consideration. ”

“ Pupils sometimes ask whether they should use long sentences or short sentences. This question is really answered in the preceding paragraph, for a simple sentence is usually shorter than a complex or a compound sentence. The fact is that what we like is variety. Until you are more experienced in composition, it will be well for you, in general, to use comparatively short sentences,—that is, sentences of not more than twenty-five or thirty words. ”

“ And in my mind I composed a little message
To the editors of those papers.
"Your readers needed plain, nourishing truth" (I said)
"And you gave them this scented compost,
Spiced and sugared with vanilla and civet. ”

“ Can any of you get up a fountain mucilage pen or brush? I guess we are a little late for ink bottles and spittoons that won't spill the contents upon upsetting. A thought in mind seems to constantly annoy. ”

“ The planning of a new book, from the determination of the shape of page and proper width of margin to the selection of the style and size of type in which each of its many parts should be set, is a subject too broad to be fairly treated in a limited space. ”

“ Texture is best studied by examining a sheet held to the light. The minute fibres which compose the paper should be so evenly arranged or felted together that the paper is all of one consistency, not mottled or clouded. ”

“ It is not our province or intention to review the volume, but we cannot resist the inclination to make an extract, because it seems so beautiful an accessory to the subject, and must create an added interest in the engraving. Where scenes are so replete with the poetry of Nature, they are best illustrated by the poetry of numbers ”

“ And it would be easy to fill a volume, and it would not be a cheerless volume, with beautiful and expressive passages from poets, preachers, and other authors, who have taken the Rose to point the moral of the fleeting nature of all earthly things. ”

“ He fumbled among the papers and books on the table beside him, selected a sheet of paper, covered with closely written lines, and extended it in a shaking hand to his caller.
"That explains things a little," he said. "It's illuminating. Read it." ”

“ In my complex idea of a man, or the cluster of ideas of sense to which I affix that mark, are included, certain ideas of colour, of figure, size, and so on. By the word tall, I single out a portion of those ideas, namely, the part relating to size, or rather size in one direction, and mark the separation by the sign or name. In my complex idea of a flower, colour is always one of the ingredients. ”