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Dinner finished, he went up to the gunroom and began compiling his list. He found a yardstick, and thumbtacked it to the edge of the desk to get over-all and barrel lengths, and used a pair of inside calipers and a decimal-inch rule from the workbench to get calibers.
He looked very much mortified, but said that it was done to 'give the effect. I have had no misgivings since about the economy and wisdom of using the calipers freely. To be useful, they must be applied with the greatest precision so small are the differences upon which all the infinite variety in human countenances depends.
They have so frequently to stop working, in order to examine the work in hand, to use the straight edge, the square, or the calipers, to ascertain whether they are "working correctly."
We were just to windward of the Sands, out there, where I am now pointing: the sea was very rough, but the night was clear, and the moon shone bright, when we saw a brig running down before the wind, under foresail, and close-reefed topsails. `Why, Bill, as she steers she'll be right between the Calipers, said I to the man sitting by me. `There's no mistake about that, replied he: `let's haul the fore-sheet to windward, and lay to, to hail him; he's coming right down upon us. Well, we did so, and we hailed some time without any answer.
Calipers could not have told that it was widened at one end, but the hunter's eye did, and following, he looked for and found another, then smaller signs, and he knew that a big Bear and two little ones had passed and were still close at hand, for the grass in the marks was yet unbending. Lan rode his hunting pony on the trail.
The Professor smiled, as I wanted him to, and the folds radiated like the ridges of a half-opened fan, from the outer corner of the eyes to the temples. -And the calipers said I. What are the calipers? he asked, curiously. Why, the parenthesis, said I. Parenthesis? said the Professor; what's that?
The other Venetian room is almost wholly devoted to portraits, chief among them being a red-headed Tintoretto burning furiously, No. 613, and Titian's sly and sinister Caterina Cornaro in her gorgeous dress, No. 648; Piombo's "L'Uomo Ammalato"; Tintoretto's Jacopo Sansovino, the sculptor, the grave old man holding his calipers who made that wonderful Greek Bacchus at the Bargello; Schiavone's ripe, bearded "Ignoto," No. 649, and, perhaps above all, the Moroni, No. 386, black against grey.
It had taken me, however, at least five times as long to measure the distances with my eyes as it would have done to measure them with the calipers, and I saw no advantage in the longer and more painful effort. The measurements are mere preparations for the artist's true work, and are, like the surveyor's lines, preparatory to the architect's labor.
"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. 'Good, good for there, he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully.
I now show you with the calipers how accurately the work corresponds with the theory advanced; and on this, my favoured mode of working for the tone so highly spoken of by my numerous admirers, I have no more to say, except to tell you that the wood so finished corresponds in tone to D, and you will still remember that the back was C.
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