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The lead was held there an instant to harden, then another lever automatically removed the solid line of type from its place in front of the matrixes, a long arm swooped down, took the brass pieces and returned them to an endless screw arrangement which distributed them, each one to its proper place, in the series of chutes that held hundreds of others.
This lever operated the lead-casting machine at the back. A plunger was shoved down into a pot of melted lead, kept molten by means of a gas flame. A small quantity of lead was forced up against the line of matrixes, which automatically moved in a position to receive it.
Something resembling this love prevails also in the vegetable and mineral kingdoms; in the vegetable, in that seeds are guarded by shells or husks as by swaddling clothes, and moreover are in the fruit as in a house, and are nourished with juice as with milk; that there is something similar in minerals, is plain from the matrixes and external covering, in which noble gems and metals are concealed and guarded.
The difficulty is that as scarcely any two gangues, or matrixes, are exactly alike, the treatment which is found most effective on one mine will often not answer in another.
We now come to a highly important part of our subject, the practical treatment of ores and matrixes for the extraction of the metals contained. The methods employed are multitudinous, but may be divided into four classes, namely, washing, amalgamating with mercury, chlorinating, cyaniding and other leaching processes, and smelting.
To save the gold in such matrixes as these is an operation which even the best of our mechanical appliances have not yet fully accomplished. Where there is not too great a proportion of base metals on which the solvent will act, and when the material is rich enough in gold to pay for the extra cost of treatment, chlorination or cyanisation are the best modes of extraction yet practically adopted.
Everything was done automatically after the compositor had touched the keys and then the lever, so that he was almost finished with the second line of the story by the time the matrixes of the first were being returned to their slots by the machine, which seemed almost human. Thus Larry's story was set up.
As he pressed each finger down the least bit there was a click, and from the rack above the machine there tumbled down a small piece of brass, called a "matrix." This contained on one edge a depression that corresponded to a letter. In a short while enough matrixes had fallen into place to make a complete line, just the width of one of the columns of the Leader.
His father was a jeweler of Lyons, who settled in Paris before Antoine was born, and whose idea of education for his son was to place him at less than fourteen with an engraver of military equipments from whom he learned to engrave on steel and other metals, and later with a jeweler from whom he learned to make steel matrixes for molding reliefs from thin metals.
The sheets, the ink, and the matrixes of the plates are kept securely under lock and key until actually wanted. The printing is effected by steam-worked presses. The ink is blue, and its composition known only to a few of the authorities. An inspector goes his rounds during the continuance of the operations, watching every press, every workman, every process.
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