necessary that spaces of white
should exist between each separate line or mass of black. This
process, however, utterly failed in all India-ink drawings. Where
these drawings covered the white of the paper, if ever so delicately,
the result was a dense black upon the plate.

Then came a race between all the inventors interested in such
discoveries, both here and abroad--a race to perfect a process which
would produce from such wash drawings an exact reproduction upon the
printed page, giving all the gradations of the original and doing away
not only with the draftsman but with the wood-engraver. To Professor
Vogel, of Berlin, I believe--although an American, Ives, claims it,
and some say justly--is due the credit of perfecting what is known as
the half-tone, or screen process: many others claim that Herr
Meisenbach first perfected this most important discovery.

As the wash drawing had no lines, and as it is absolutely necessary
that photo-printing should have lines--that is, clean spaces of black
between white--these lines were supplied by laying a sheet of plate
glass over the drawing upon which the lines were cut by a diamond and
through which the original could be clearly seen. Of course, the light
falling upon the edges of these several diamond cuttings made little
points of brilliant white between which the several blacks and whites
could be seen. This, without going very much further into the
mechanical details, is the basis of the half-tone process.

While this had its value, it had also its demerits, one of which was
the total extermination of the American wood-engraver, except for a
few men like Timothy Cole, whose genius and skill made it possible for
them, by the excellence of their work, to survive the great difference
between twenty cents a square inch for transferring on zinc and twenty
dollars a square inch for engraving on wood.

There are, however, results in the half-tone process which I hold are
infinitely superior to the work of any wood-engraver of the old
school. While it is true that there is no really positive rich dark
for any part of the composition--for, of course, the light specks are
everywhere, thus lightening and graying the dark--and while we lose by
such defects the richness of wood-engraving, we also get the exact
touch of the artist in no more and no less a degree, particularly no
less. How often have I seen an exquisite drawing of Abbey's or Du
Maurier's almost ruined by the slip