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In the summer-time he would take Minna and Aunt Hedwig, always accompanied by her faithful Herr Sohnstein, upon beer-drinking expeditions to Guttenberg and other fashionable suburban resorts; and through the cozy winter evenings he smoked his long pipe comfortably in the little room at the back of the shop, where Minna and Aunt Hedwig sat with him, and where Herr Sohnstein, also smoking a long pipe, usually sat with him too.
One of the latter thus described Angiolillo: "His appearance suggested the journalist rather than the disciple of Guttenberg. His delicate hands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he had not grown up at the 'case. With his handsome frank face, his soft dark hair, his alert expression, he looked the very type of the vivacious Southerner.
Among the secretaries and attaches, several were very interesting; and of these was the first British secretary Henry Howard, now Sir Henry Howard, minister at The Hague. He and his American wife were among the most delightful of associates. Another in this category was the Bavarian secretary, Baron Guttenberg, whom I often met later at Berlin.
For in that crude, undeveloped Idea were already germinating the wonders of an achievement grander than any of Schwartz, or Guttenberg, or Galileo. Oh, this beautiful, grand simplicity of Science, which was able, from the snail itself, the very type and symbol and byword of torpidity and inaction, to evolve what was to conquer time and space, to outrun the wildest imaginings of Puck himself!"
As the locomotive of to-day contains the engine of Watt and the improvements of all succeeding inventors; as the Hoe printing-press contains the rude hand-machine of Guttenberg and the best features of all the machines that followed it; so the human body contains the special gift of all earlier and lower forms of animal life.
"I neither deny nor admit their claims, because I do not know the grounds upon which they are founded; like the invention of gunpowder and printing, the discovery of the compass has many rival claimants." "I am of opinion," said Jack, "that Guttenberg is entitled to the honor of discovering printing, and that Berthold Schwartz invented gunpowder."
"They say that Guttenberg conceived the notion of the printing press while taking an after-dinner smoke; that Stephenson's ideas of steam locomotion came to him through the curling wreaths of his favorite Virginia; and that Morse figured out the telegraph with a pipe in his mouth. I never could corroborate these statements, though I don't doubt them a bit.
From the republic of Cracow, poor remnant of Poland, swallowed by Austria, down to the freedom of the press guaranteed to Germany, but reduced to such a condition that, in the native land of Guttenberg, not one square yard of soil is left to set a free press upon, everything that was not evil in those inviolable treaties has been trampled down, to the profit of despotism, of concordats, of Jesuits, and of benighting darkness.
But who, for a certainty, knows the inventor of printing? or the country of its origin? Was it Holland in the person of Coster of Haarlem? Or Germany in the person of Mentel, the nobleman, of Strasburg? Or Guttenberg, the goldsmith, of Mayence? Was it neither of these countries? or none of these men? And why this uncertainty?
It seems to have introduced into the world, as I said above, an element of infinite inequality. Guttenberg makes large profits by this invention, and perfects the invention by the profits, until all other copyists are ruined. As for the public the consumer it gains but little, for Guttenberg takes care to lower the price of books only just so much as is necessary to undersell all rivals.
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