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In spite of all, sleep overcame him, and he was obliged to interrupt his work for several hours; yet at 7 o'clock in the morning the copyist was sent for and the overture was ready for him.
If the pioneer was a natural copyist, she doubled and twisted it, to make it in the exact fashion of the English crewel; if adventurous and independent, she worked it single threaded. This yarn had all the pliant qualities necessary for embroidery, and was in fact uncolored crewel. Said to have been brought to Essex, Mass., in 1640, by Madam Susanna, wife of Sylvester Eveleth.
For some time he was unsuccessful in every application he made for employment, and he was glad at length to accept the situation of copyist in a Lawyer's Office, till something better might offer. His salary barely sufficed for their support, yet they were thankful even for that. His constitution had never been robust, and the anxiety of mind under which he labored told severely upon his health.
Now painting begins its career in the humble capacity of copyist, a pretty poor copyist at that. At first so slight was its skill that the rudest symbols sufficed. "This is a man" was conventionally implied by a few scratches bearing a very distant relationship to the real thing. Gradually, owing to human vanity and a growing taste, pictures improved.
"I have passed the forenoon to-day, and all yesterday afternoon in correcting these two pieces and am actually hoarse with stamping and swearing," he wrote the copyist in reference to the A minor Quartet. Elsewhere he complains about the carelessness of the publishers of his earlier quartets, which are "full of mistakes and errata great and small. They swarm like fish in the sea, innumerable."
Sometimes a copyist evidently substituted a word that he thought was plainer for one that was more obscure; a more elegant word for one less elegant; a grammatical construction for one that was not grammatical. Other differences have arisen from the habit of some of the copyists or owners of manuscripts of writing glosses, or brief explanatory notes, on the margin.
The ornamentation of leaves and vines, executed in accordance with the laws of organic necessity, becomes, without the draughtsman being aware of it, an arbitrarily curved rococo scroll; the proportions, which in reality soar upward, spread out in width, so that one might think it possible for the eyesight to change also, and yet in the building itself perhaps not a stone has been disturbed since its erection; the pigtail surely did not transport itself into the original it existed only in the eye of the copyist.
The maiden from New Hampshire, who counted currency in the Treasury Department for nine hundred dollars a year; the young student from Wisconsin, who received twelve hundred dollars per annum for his services as a copyist in the General Land Office; the janitor of the Circumlocution Bureau, and the energetic correspondent of the Cranberry Centre Gazette, each and all thought that they should dine at the foreign legations, sup with the members of the Cabinet, and mingle in the mazes of the "German" with the families of the Senators.
Young Clay's excellent handwriting brought him gradually into the most affectionate relations with Chancellor Wythe, whose aged hand trembled to such a degree that he was glad to borrow a copyist from the clerk's office.
The shifting of the water-cooler from the front office to the packing-room may be an epochal event to a copyist who apparently has no human existence beyond bending over a clacking typewriter, who seems to have no home, no family, no loves; in whom all pride and wonder of life and all transforming drama seem to be satisfied by the possession of a new V-necked blouse.
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