in which type of various kinds and
sizes is kept. The style or design of letter is called the 'face', and
there are a great many sorts of faces, as you will notice by the labels
on the drawers. There is Cheltenham, Ionic, Gothic--a multitude of
others. There are, in addition, almost as many sizes of letters as there
are faces, the letters running from large to a very small, or agate size
which is used for footnotes."

He opened a drawer and Paul glanced inside it.

"But the letters do not seem to be arranged with any system at all,"
exclaimed the boy in surprise. "I don't see how the men can ever find
what they want. I should think--"

He broke off, embarrassed.

"You should think what?" asked Mr. Hawley good-humoredly.

"Why, it just seems to me that if the letters were arranged in
alphabetical order it would be a great deal easier to get them when one
was in a hurry."

"It would seem so on the face of it," agreed Mr. Hawley, pleased by the
lad's intelligence. "Printers, however, never arrange type that way.
Instead, they put in the spot nearest at hand the letters they will use
oftenest. It saves time. The men soon become accustomed to the position
of these and can put their hands on them quickly and without the least
trouble. The largest compartments in the drawers are given over to the
letters most commonly in use, such as vowels and frequently recurring
consonants. The letter Z you will notice has only a small space allowed
it; X, too, is not much in demand."

"I see."

"Take one of these letters out and examine it."

Paul did so.

It was a thin bar of what appeared to be lead and was an inch long. On
the end of it a single letter was cast.

"Besides these cases of letters, we have drawers of marks and signs
arranged according to the same system, those most often in use being at
the front of the drawer."

"It must have taken forever to hunt up the right letters and spell out
the words before linotypes were invented," mused Paul.

"Yes, any amount of time was wasted that way," said Mr. Hawley. "The
strain on the eyes was, too, something appalling. It is quite another
matter to sit at a keyboard and with the pressure of a key assemble the
proper matrices, as the type molds are called, and arrange in desired
order correctly spaced and punctuated lines of type. Come over here and
see how the work is done."

Crossing the floor, they stood before a machine where an operator was
busy fingering a keyboar