London
Short’s Cut-off shut out all oilier subjects from my head next morning.
It was an innovation, a revolution. Mankind objects to both. It came from America, and though America has given tobacco, woman’s rights, the potato, model yachts, model States, and trotting horses to the Old World, that World still distrusts our work as boyish. We in turn deem the Old World a mere child, and our youth based on a completer maturity than they will attain for half a millennium.
Short’s Cut-off was so simple that it puzzled everybody.
I consulted half a dozen eminent engineers.
“Very pretty, indeed!” they said, and at once turned the conversation to the explosions on Western rivers. “Had I ever been blown up? How did it feel?”
But as to Short’s Cut-off, they only thought it a neat contrivance, but evidently by a person who did not comprehend intricate machinery.
I took it to a man of another order. England is the world’s machine-shop; he was England’s chief engineer. A great man he was, dead, alas! now. A freeman, who recognized the world as his country, and genius everywhere as his brother.
He understood Short’s Cut-off at a glance.
How I wish old Short could have been there, to see this great man’s eye glow with enthusiasm as he said: “Admirable! This is what we have all been waiting for, Padiham must see this. We must have it in every engine in England. Command my services to aid in making it known.”
“Can you recommend me,” said I, presently, “a thorough mechanic. I want some more models made of these valves and machinery, to illustrate their action.”
“You must go to Padiham, the best artisan I know in all England.”
“Worth seeing for himself, as the man whom you name best among these millions of craftsmen.”
“Padiham is the man.’’
“He ought to have name and fame.”
“He might if he chose.”
“Worth knowing, again, for this rare abnegation.”
“He is an oddity. Some unlucky mode of life stunted him, mind and body, until he was a mature man. He is dwarfed in person, and fancies his mind suffers too. It makes him a little gruff to feel that he is a man of tools, and not of principles, — a mechanic, not a philosopher. There is nothing of morbidness or disappointment in him. Only he underrates himself, and fancies his powers blunted by his deformity. He keeps out of the way, and works alone in a little shop. He will only do special jobs for me and one or two others. He says he would be our equal, if he were full-grown. We deem him our peer, and treat him as such; but he will not come out and take the place he could have at once before the world. I thought of him, and wished him to see this Cut-off, as soon as you showed it to me. You must tell him I sent you, or he may be surly at first, and so drive you away, or perhaps refuse to do your work.”
“I think I can make my way with such a person; but if not, I will use your name. Where is he to be found?”
“This is his address. An out-of-the-way place, you see, if you know London. A by-street on the Surrey side of the Thames. He is well to do; but lives there for a special economy. He has a method of charity, which is like himself thoroughly original. More good he does in his odd way than any man I know. He owns the whole house over his shop, and uses it as a private hospital or hospice for poor but worthy sick and broken-down people.”
“His own dwarfishness makes him sympathetic?”
“Yes; instead of souring, it softens him to the feeble. He may perhaps feel a transitory resentment at big, strong fellows like you and me; but he is always tender to the weak. His wonderful knowledge of machinery comes into play in his hospital. From the machines man makes, he has passed to a magical knowledge of the finest machine of all.”
“The human body?”
“The machine that invents and executes machines, the human body, — the most delicate mechanism of all, the type of all its own inventions. Padiham achieves magical cures. He is working by practice, and lately by study, into profound surgical skill. There is no man in England whom I would trust to mend me if I broke, as I would Padiham.”
“He avenges himself upon Nature for not perfecting him, by restoring her breakages. Why do you not suggest to him to become a professed repairer of mankind?”
“I have suggested it. He says he must take his own way. Besides, mechanics can hardly spare him. Many of my own inventions would have stayed in embryo in my brain, if Padiham had not played Vulcan, and split a passage for them. I talk over my schemes to him; he catches the idea and puts it into form at once.”