“Look here!” he said, detaining Gracie by an imperious inclination of his head, as she handed him the copy; “how did you make these? didn't you print them fifteen times? I didn't understand what you said.”
“Why no!” said Gracie, “the machine will manifold. I'll show you; come over to the end window; it stands there waiting to be displayed, and it is a little wonder.”
Then they crowded around the type-writer, and Gracie, really proud of the skill she had acquired in a week's time, showed off the little wonder to great advantage.
The fact that the type-writer was new to most of the others, that they were decidedly ignorant as to its working, increased the comfort of the hour by doing away with the embarrassing feeling that any one of them was playing a part. Dr. Everett was no more familiar with the type-writer than was Dirk Colson, and was just as eager to know about it.
Also everybody, apparently, felt an equally strong desire to write his name on the marvellous little creature, and each in turn sat down before it and moved his awkward hands with nearly equal slowness over the keys, picking out the magic letters.
It was this episode that made the workers during their next conference branch out in new lines.
“We need something,” said Dr. Everett, walking up and down the floor in puzzled thought, “we need something that shall be a genuine common interest, of which we are all, or all but one, equally ignorant—something that we can take hold of with zest, on as low a platform as the most ignorant of those seen. I was convinced of that when I saw the abandon with which we all went into the type-writer business, with a naturalness and equality that, in the matter of reading and writing, it is impossible for us to feel. If the machine were complicated, so that it would take us each three months or so to master it, that would do. What can we take up that will place us on a level?”