Little rays of moonshineHerbert, A. P. (Alan Patrick)
General
Little rays of moonshine
Herbert, A. P. (Alan Patrick)
English essays -- 20th century; English wit and humor
the typewriter to me has always been a mustery£? and even now that
I have gained a perfect mastery over the machine in gront of me i
have npt th3 faintest idea hoW it workss% &or instance why does the
thingonthetop the klnd of overhead Wailway arrangement move along one
pace afterr every word; I haVe exam aaa ined the mechanism from all
points of view but there seeems to be noreason atall whyit shouould do
t£is . damn that £, it keeps butting in: it is Just lik real life. then
there are all kinds oF attractive devisesand levers andbuttons of which
is amanvel in itself, and does somethI5g useful without lettin on how
it does iT.
Forinstance on this machinE which is Ami/et a mijge7 imean a
mi/dgt,made of alumium,, and very light sothat you caN CARRY it about
on your £olidays (there is that £ again) and typeout your poems onthe
Moon immmmediately, and there is onely one lot of keys for capITals and
ordinay latters; when you want todoa Capital you press down a special
key marked cap i mean CAP with the lefft hand and yo7 press down the
letter withthe other, like that abcd, no, ABCDEFG . how jolly that
looks . as a mattr of fact th is takes a little gettingintoas all the
letters on the keys are printed incapitals so now and then one forgets
topress downthe SPecial capit al key. not often, though. on the other
hand onceone £as got it down and has written anice nam e in capitals
like LLOYdgeORGE IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO REmemBER TO PUT IT DOWN AGAIN
ANDTHE N YOU GET THIS SORT OF THING WHICH SPOILS THE LOOOK OF THE HOLE
PAGE . or els insted of preSSing down the key marked CAP onepresses
down the key m arked FIG and then instead of LLOYDGEORGE you find that
you have written ½½96%:394:3. this is very dissheartening and £t is no
wonder that typists are sooften sououred in ther youth.
Apart fromthat though the key marked FIG is rather fun , since you can
rite such amusing things withit, things like % and @ and dear old &
not to mention = and ¼ and ¾ and ! ! ! i find that inones ordinarry (i
never get that word right) cor orresponden£c one doesnt use expressions
like @@ and %%% nearly enough. typewriting gives you a new ideaof
possibilities o fthe engli£h language; thE more i look at % the more
beautiful it seems to Be: and like the simple flowers of england itis
per£aps most beauti£ul when seeen in the masss, Look atit
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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