the heart of the place.

"This," said the young man attending her, "is the hand bindery. Few books are bound here; sometimes not more than six a year, but they are handsomely, wonderfully bound. Mr. Kirkland, the head of this department, will tell you all about it. I hear my autophone call. I will come for you a little later."

Lucile was not sorry to be left alone in such a room. It was a place of rare enchantment. Seated at their benches, bending over their work, with their blue fires burning before them, were three skilled workmen. They were more than workmen; they were artists. The work turned out by them rivaled in beauty and perfection the canvas of the most skilled painter. They wrought in inlaid leather and gold; the artist in crayon and oils. The artist uses palette, knife and brush; their steel tools were fashioned to suit their art.

Ranged along one side of the room was a long rack in which these tools were kept. There were hundreds of them, and each tool had its place. Every now and again from the benches there came a hot sizzling sound, which meant that one of these tools was being tested after having been heated over the flame.Seeing her looking at the rack of tools, the head workman, a broad-shouldered man with a pleasant smile and keen blue eyes, turned toward her.

"Would you like to have me tell you a little about them?" he asked.

"Indeed I should."

"Those tools once belonged to Hans Wiemar, the most famous man ever known to the craft. After he died I bought them from his widow. He once spent three years binding a single book. It was to be presented to the king of England. He was a very skillful artisan.

"We bind some pretty fine books here, too," he said modestly. "Here is one I am only just beginning. You see it is a very large book, a book of poetry printed in the original German. I shall be at least two months doing it.

"The last one I had was much smaller but it was to have taken me four months." A shadow passed over his face.

"Did--did you finish it?" asked Lucile, a tone of instinctive sympathy in her voice.

"It was an ancient French book, done in the oldest French type. It was called 'Mysteries of the Sea,'" he went on without answering her question. "This was the tool we used most on it," he said, holding out the edge of a steel tool for her inspection. 

 Prev. P 37/99 next