HINTS HONOURED IN THE BREACH.
When you lay a fount of new type, don’t open the papers carefully, and place the lines evenly with a brass rule in the cases, nick up; but show your skill by tumbling over each package rapidly, and bringing it down with a rush on the imposing-stone; then, roughly throwing the a’s into a chaotic pile, grab them up by handfuls and work them well down in the appropriate box. The harder you jostle them down, the more you will get in. Proceed thus with each letter; and, if the operation has been vigorously performed, the value of the fount will have been reduced, say ten per cent.
2. While you set out one case, let your galley lie on the overheaped type of another case.
3. If a line is rather too tight to permit the last letter to get in easily, push it down hard with your rule or a quadrate. The type may be injured; but why didn’t it fit in just right at first?
4. Empty your matter at a gentle inclination on the galley, and make it up at the same angle. You can bring it right afterward—perhaps—by the energetic application of mallet, shooting-stick, and planer.
5. When the case is half set out, shake up the type energetically, and do so very often. The exercise will strengthen your muscles.
6. Don’t brush off the stone before you lay the matter down. If any sand happens to get under, the type will show its impression beautifully deep and clear on the face of the planer,—perhaps a whole word or two.
7. Don’t plane till the form is locked up, as thus you save the trouble of the first planing. But, now that you do plane, hammer away, and show your musical ability in playing a tattoo on the form. Don’t lay the planer tenderly and lovingly on the types, as if you were afraid to hurt their feelings, and gently tap it; but hold it off about a quarter or three-eighths of an inch, and then bring down the mallet with a will. Phew! how the planer will descend obedient to the stroke, and rebound again, and perhaps again. If the form is not smooth on the surface now, it is not your fault. Repeat this each time when the form is locked up, till it goes to press; and you may depend on it the impression will gain in boldness, if not in looks.
8. When correcting your numerous errors, don’t trouble yourself to lift the lines carefully at the ends, but dig right into the head of the erring letter, and, resting your bodkin on the type below it, pry up the sinner: it does not matter if you demolish two or three types in the under line.
9. Wash your form energetically, and apply the ley bountifully with a good stiff wiry brush. Never mind rinsing: clean type is an old-fogy notion.
10. When the type is out of use, let it lie around promiscuously,—on a table, or board, or any place where it will be occasionally convenient to lay on it a mallet or tin basin. If one strip of matter is placed on another, room will be economized. Moreover, the under layers will be safe from dust.
11 (comprehensively). Do every thing in a loose way generally, letting matters go as they list, throwing your pi into spare boxes or secretly placing it on the letter-table or some out-of-the-way place, stealing sorts from your neighbour, overcharging time-work and extras, fishing for fat takes, &c.
12. If you observe these things faithfully and constantly, and your employer does not kick you out of his office, why—you do not get your deserts.