The girl had economized
time and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart.
However, we argued--safely enough--that the FIRST type-girl must
naturally take rank with the first billiard-player: neither of them
could be expected to get out of the game any more than a third or a
half of what was in it. If the machine survived--IF it survived
--experts would come to the front, by and by, who would double the girl's
output without a doubt. They would do one hundred words a minute
--my talking speed on the platform. That score has long ago been beaten.
At home I played with the toy, repeated and repeating and repeated "The
Boy stood on the Burning Deck," until I could turn that boy's adventure
out at the rate of twelve words a minute; then I resumed the pen,
for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring visitors.
They carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck.
By and by I hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters,
merely), and my last until now. The machine did not do both capitals
and lower case (as now), but only capitals. Gothic capitals they were,
and sufficiently ugly. I remember the first letter I dictated.
it was to Edward Bok, who was a boy then. I was not acquainted
with him at that time. His present enterprising spirit is not new
--he had it in that early day. He was accumulating autographs, and was
not content with mere signatures, he wanted a whole autograph LETTER.
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