quotes_jun24_2007.htm

…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.
The…paper in its locked formes lay on a stone-topped table, a proof by the side…With a mallet and a pair of tweezers, he knocked out mysterious wedges of wood that released the forme, picked a letter here and inserted a letter there, reading as he went along and stopping much to chuckle over his own contributions…

This is from Stalky & Co.

Beetle is making some last minute changes to the school magazine, using his newly-acquired expertise in printing. He goes on to edit a Latin prose exam. paper, with devastating results for the examiner, Mr King…

Keller was insolent with joy. He was going to cable from Southampton to the New York World, mail his account to America on the same day, paralyse London with his three columns of loosely knitted headlines, and generally efface the earth. ‘You’ll see how I work a big scoop when I get it’, he said.
‘Is this your first visit to England ?’ I asked.
‘Yes’, said he…

This is from “A Matter of Fact” in Many Inventions. Three newspapermen, an Englishman, an American, and a Dutchman, on a ship in the Atlantic, have seen a great sea-monster cast up from the deep by a volcano, and witnessed its death-throes.

The American plans to paralyse the world’s press with his scoop. The others, older and wiser, have realised that the story is so sensational that it won’t be believed. It is never printed, except as fiction by the Englishman.

…It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for water…There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make tension, but, as the clock hands crept up to three o’clock, and the machines swung their flywheels two or three times to see that all was in order before I said the word that would set them off, I could have shrieked aloud…

This is from “The Man who Would be King” in Wee Willie Winkie.

The newspaper editor is waiting, in a stifling hot June night, for the last piece of news that must be included before he can set the presses rolling. He does not yet know that a strange tale is about to unfold, from two adventurers who are off to the high hills to make themselves kings…