The Enchanted Typewriter

The Enchanted Typewriter

It is a strange fact, for which I do not expect ever satisfactorily to account, and which will receive little credence even among those who know that I am not given to romancingit is a strange fact, I say, that the substance of the following pages has evolved itself during a period of six months, more or less, between the hours of midnight and four o'clock in the morning, proceeding directly from a type-writing machine standing in the corner of my library, manipulated by unseen hands. The machine is not of recent make. It is, in fact, a relic of the early seventies, which I discovered one morning when, suffering from a slight attack of the grip, I had remained at home and devoted my time to pottering about in the attic, unearthing old books, bringing to the light long-forgotten correspondences, my boyhood collections of stuff, and other memory-inducing things. Whence the machine came originally I do not recall. My impression is that it belonged to a stenographer once in the employ of my father, who used frequently to come to our house to take down dictations. However this may be, the machine had lain hidden by dust and the flotsam and jetsam of the house for twenty years, when, as I have said, I came upon it unexpectedly. Old man as I amI shall soon be thirtythe fascination of a machine has lost none of its potency. I am as pleased to-day watching the wheels of my watch go round as ever I was, and to monkey with a type-writing apparatus has always brought great joy into my heartthough for composing give me the pen. Perhaps I should apologize for the use here of the verb monkey, which savors of what a friend of mine calls the English slanguage, to differentiate it from what he also calls the Andrew Language. But I shall not do so, because, to whatever branch of our tongue the word may belong, it is exactly descriptive, and descriptive as no other word can be, of what a boy does with things that click and go, and is therefore not at all out of place in a tale which I trust will be regarded as a polite one. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 3162
Author: Bangs, John Kendrick
Release Date: Apr 1, 2002
Format: eBook
Language: English