The next morning I saw a new face at the keyboard of one of our linecasting machines. I had long ago adopted democracy as a good policy, so now I stopped to introduce myself. “I’m J. J. Shane, the manager.”
His hands, with incredibly long fingers, had been just flowing over the keyboard—that is the only way to describe it—with the long fingers moving down an inch or so whenever they were above the right key, and doing it all so smoothly it was hard to realize he was actually composing lines. His hands seemed to flow back and forth like the tide, and yet he was setting twenty ems eight-point and keeping the machine hung. Here, I thought right away, was a valuable man. This fellow could be a pacesetter if we would handle him right.
But when I spoke to him and held out my hand, he looked at me for a second without missing a stroke, then his hands dropped away from the keyboard and he started to unfold himself from the chair.
“You don’t