THE YOUTHS CABINET.

the original inventor, almost as much as
his rude types and. press astonished the
people of his age.

In describing the process of. printing,
I shall use as plain and simple language
as I can; but you must not be surprised
if, even with all my care, you are unable
to understand precisely all the details of
ihe art.

We will suppose that this article on
printing is to make the, acquaintance of
the types. The first thing to, be done is
to furnish the printer with a copy, in
manuscript, of what I want printed,
This copy the printer has before him,
when he is engaged in putting it in type.
Yousee a portion of a printing-office inthe
last engraving. The man whois at work
there is a compositor, that is, one whose
part of the business is to arrange

types according to the copy. ‘Those up-
right frames, are called stands. The ob-

ject of these is to furnish a support for
the cases, which you see lying on them,
containing the types. There are three
pairs of cases in the picture, The up-
per case, contains, the capital and small
capital letters, and some other less im-
portant types. The lower case, which
is laid on the stand less upright than the
other, contains the smaller letters, in
which the great body of a book is print-
ed. In the upper case, the capitals and
small capitals are arranged in the same
order in which they. occur in the alpha-
bet. The capitals are, on one side of the
wide upright division, and the small cap-
itals. on the. other side, Counting from
the bottom of the case, on the left hand,
upward, the capitals begin on the fourth
row. The first box contains A, the
second toward the right hand contains
B, and so on. On the other side of the

the |

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wide division, the small capitals are
placed in the same order. In the lower
case, the order is different. The letters
are not placed there according to the
order in which they occur in the alpha-
bet. The reason of this irregularity. is,
that more types are needed of some let-
ters than of others, The letter e, for in-
stance, occurs a great deal oftener than
any other letter in the alphabet.

Look, now, at, one of the pairs of cases
in the engraving. Those on the extreme
left are more easily examined than the
rest-—look at them, If you take notice
of the lower case, you will see one box

at the top, just at the left of the central

division, larger than any other in the case,
This is the box devoted to the letter e,
“But I don’t, see why, after all’””—so
methinks I hear, some thoughtful boy
inquire—“ I don’t see why the, letters
should not be arranged in alphabetical
order, I should think they might make
some such araangement, and still have
those letters which were used most fre-
quently placed so that. they could be
picked up with the most convenience.”
I confess I used myself to think that
that would be the best mode, But I was
mistaken. The truth is, if all the let-
ters occurred in alphabetical order, and
especially if all the boxes were of the
same size, the printer would not recol-
lect. what boxes were appropriated to
each letter so well as he now does. The
very irregularity, of the arrangement aids
the memory, where it becomes necessary,
as in this case, to draw so often upon the
memory,

Before the. compositor can do anything
toward putting the manuscript before
him in type, he must have a composing-
stick. ‘This is an iron frame, so constuct-