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Updated: May 16, 2025
There were rugs on the marble pavement, and chairs and tables; and on the tables, besides vases with flowers, and other things, there were a good many books. It was an old, small book, in tree-calf, stamped, in the midst of much elaborate gold tooling, with the Valdeschi arms and coronet. Half-consciously examining it, he became aware presently that it was a volume of the poems of Ronsard.
Two handsomely carved consoles resting on the fillet of this ovolo molding support the superb molded panel of the overmantel some three by five feet, in which to this day not a joint is to be seen. A band of exquisite floreated carving in high relief fills the long, narrow, horizontal panel between the consoles. The precision of the tooling in this intricate tracery is indeed remarkable.
"I should want a little fire for my glue-pot and polishing-iron. There will be gilding and lettering too, though I hope not much title-pieces to replace, and a touch here and there to give to the tooling! No man with any reverence in him would meddle much with such delicate, lovely old things as many of these gildings! He would not dare more than just touch them!"
A tall custard-coloured phaeton tooling up in a solemn manner leaves four cards, to wit, a couple of Mr Podsnaps, a Mrs Podsnap, and a Miss Podsnap. All the world and his wife and daughter leave cards.
The Bible has been printed here in twenty-four different dialects, and parts of it have been issued in others still. About six hundred persons find employment in this gigantic establishment. Of these about three hundred are girls, and twenty or thirty boys. The girls feed the presses, sew the books, apply gold-leaf to the covers ready for tooling, etc.
They were no commonplace affairs, the ugly result of a union of cheap leather, newspaper-clippings and paste, but sumptuous books resplendent in morocco and gilt tooling, the creations of an artist who was eminent among binders. These scrap-books were chiefly devoted to living men, men who were famous, or who were believed to be on the high road to fame. There was a book for each man.
Turn over the pages of any one of them, and you find a drama worthy the pen of Sophocles or Euripides: close the volume all is gilt edge and exquisite tooling. Well may they hate the confidants of such crimes, and plot their destruction! What if the outcast should take to rehearsing in public the tragedy that he has got by heart?
Meanwhile the tonga rocked and bounded fiendishly over an infamous parody of a road, turning and twisting between huge boulders and in and out of pebbly nullahs, Ram Nath tooling it along with the hand of a master. But all his attention was of necessity centred upon the ponies, and presently his tulwar slipped from his knees and clattered upon the floor of the tonga.
Sport was little known then, young men passing their afternoons tooling solemnly up and down Bellevue Avenue in top-hats and black frock-coats under the burning August sun. This was the epoch when the Town and Country Club was young and full of vigor. We met at each other’s houses or at historic sites to hear papers read on serious subjects. One particular afternoon is vivid in my memory.
The next day in the forenoon, Richard was busy as usual in the library. Doors and windows were shut against draughts, for he was working with gold-leaf on the tooling of an ancient binding. A door opened, and in came the goblin of the house.
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