Lost Art Press

(An Open Letter)

Yes, we have all been reading Sir Walter Scott’s journal, and are noway surprised but every way pleased to hear that you have taken to heart his pathetic lament when in old age winter restricted his outdoor exercise, and he regretted that he was no mechanic to solace himself with a turning-lathe or joiner’s bench. And so you have invested in an American lathe with velocipede action, which you drive sitting, hoping to get as much exercise in an hour of an evening at home as by a six-mile run on a tricycle.

Meantime, by way of beginning, you have broken the points of your whole kit of tools and crumpled up two leaves of the quick-feed pinion, and with them three teeth of the rack, to say nothing of smashing a finger-nail with the jaw of the indispensable scrollchuck (by the by, a rubber fetlock-ring effectually guards against this last disaster), and the net result of your labours is some bushels of shavings with a couple of pounds of brass and iron dust. Naturally at this point you desire an opinion on your prospects as a craftsman.
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Many persons upon whom fortune does not smile, or who wish to be rich very quickly, think that nowadays it is not possible for a simple man to get to the top of the tree, because all occupations are so overstocked, and there are already too many people in the world. That this opinion is a false one, and that the right man can always do something for himself, if he has the real stuff in him, and perseveres, the following true story proves:

In the year 1826 a poor journeyman turner named Muhle, in worn-out shoes through which his bare toes projected, with a knapsack on his weary back, arrived at a little village not far from Colmar, in Alsace. In this village was an engine-factory, in which our workman had come to look for employment. But the poor fellow’s ragged, miserable appearance did not tell in his favor, and the master of the factory at once sent him about his business.
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