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She was an embroideress, as I soon discovered from a small stretching-frame, containing some unfinished work, which she occasionally carried in her hand. She set me a worthy example of punctuality, and I could any day have told the time to a minute without looking at my watch, by marking the spot where we passed each other.
This last operation required that the body of the picture, disengaged from its cartonnage, or paper facing, and furnished with a new ground, should be exactly applied to the cloth done over with resinous substances, at the same time avoiding every thing that might hurt it by a too strong or unequal extension, and yet compelling every part of its vast extent to adhere to the cloth strained on the stretching-frame.
"I can never forget the occasion when he called his pupils together to witness one of the first, if not the first, successful experiment with the electric telegraph. It was in the winter of 1835-36. I can see now that rude instrument, constructed with an old stretching-frame, a wooden clock, a home-made battery and the wire stretched many times around the walls of the studio.
My first instrument was made up of an old picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old wooden clock moved by a weight to carry the paper forward; three wooden drums, upon one of which the paper was wound and passed over the other two; a wooden pendulum, suspended to the top piece of the picture or stretching-frame, and vibrating across the paper as it passes over the centre wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum in contact with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf across the picture or stretching frame, opposite to an armature made fast to the pendulum; a type rule and type, for breaking the circuit, resting on an endless band composed of carpet-binding; which passed over two wooden rollers, moved by a wooden crank, and carried forward by points projecting from the bottom of the rule downward into the carpet-binding; a lever, with a small weight on the upper side, and a tooth projecting downward at one end, operated on by the type, and a metallic fork, also projecting downward, over two mercury cups; and a short circuit of wire embracing the helices of the electro-magnet connected with the positive and negative poles of the battery and terminating in the mercury cups."
This master-piece was still to be solidly applied on a new ground: for that, it was necessary to paste paper over it again, detach it from the temporary gauze which had been put on the impression, add a new coat of oxyde of lead and oil, apply to it a gauze rendered very supple, and on the latter, in like manner done over with a preparation of lead, a raw cloth, woven all in one piece, and impregnated, on its exterior surface, with a resinous substance, which was to confine it to a similar canvass fixed on the stretching-frame.
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