English Studies Forum

Hysterical Operators: The Inspector of Factories Visits the Lover of Melodrama

Wendy Walker

amidst thunder

   aristocrat  cautiously   sinks into   the orphan

her father    carrying  the conflagration      announces

                                                 wrongful fires

  the following three types      hobgoblins   

the truth of melodrama        money

a child is  her father’s stricken boat  exemplified in a  window

   a woman thinks her plot into a torrent        and vanishes

He positioned himself where the operative must stand and threw off the brake, so that the lashes started to spin.  With due steadiness and delicacy the horizontal shafts began their transverse swing, driving the straps and belts with the power of 60 horses who could work all day at maximum capacity and need never be curried or fed.

sea sentiment               disordered  height

holding a letter  of this entrance

                                a mountain confesses all

He did not lose sight of the fact that the above-mentioned shafts continued with unvarying regularity to transport the carriage, which responded with some lateral swagging.  Into the twofold heart of the carriage the ponderous piston drove with so efficient an impulsion that he could feel even the most hidden ramifications conducting the nameless energy they were designed to serve.

a dell in mist          is pursued  returns and vanishes

       and heroine    lifeless with great agitation

  comes forward to   situations  with a poniard

                                         which rends  ruins

To carry out a thorough inspection of so complex a contraction machine required attention to the very smallest pinions secluded behind the teeth of axle and arbor.  He slowed the gears, so that the iron sliding among the well-oiled surfaces dragged along the bed of the grooves, prolonging the strange murmur of the ropes as they vibrated in rectangular directions.

 music plays at  his daughter’s arms

a cry   rises out of the    her   of him

                                  building    the captain’s lady

                   hair     on the waves

As he elicited from the mechanism the finest functioning it had yet displayed, he raised the twin rollers into a position which deepened the angle of the grooves, so that the thrust into which he directed the force of 200 pounds induced the maximum friction possible along the walls of the cylinder.  Simultaneously he flung the bevel wheel-gearing as wide open as it would go, so that the sliding iron bar, the drag of which he intentionally slowed, extorted a degree of suction he had not expected.  It could hardly be more evident, even to the casual observer, that the engine was capable of unusual effort when managed with expert and assiduous skill.

a ghost and each other   with redoubled fury     while guiding

              magnanimous     lightning

                                               stab it

        the child         character

               who eludes  with his   flowers   strewn

Excited by the readiness with which the interlocked parts responded to his handling, he determined to exploit the engine to the utmost.  Removing the straps from the brakes, he detached one row of counterweights completely so that the throstles could swing as they pleased.  This left the steam pipes so entirely open that he had to exercise additional vigilance.  The temperature of the metal rose and the beam dredged the internal mechanism so forcibly that he feared for the soldering of the flanges.  The intractable motion he had prepared was unleashed, and dissipated the fuel.

her loss     thrilling   after          gloomy castles

   a cave            between   excitement        inhumanity

domestic    darkness          caught up and thrown

   alive he  explodes another       exaltation

             heroine rushes    cries    looks after

Having achieved some sense of the machine’s limits with regard to its principle function, he stood back from the operative’s post and looked at it curiously. An invention so complex could not but be flexible to a degree.  He contemplated the assemblage from various vantage points, running his hands along the extensions, randomly fingering screw bolts and rivets.  At length he overturned the horizontal frame, and hoisted it against the uprights, adjusting distances and proportions with considerable ingenuity. He did not omit to explore the magnitudes of relevant apertures. Although he raised again the central pier, he waited until the semi-circumference opposite exhibited a certain elasticity which, experience led him to believe, would become manifest in many components as the motile energy possessed itself of the mechanism as a whole.  This general pliancy having established itself, to which every slightest rigger and cord would accede, he could then conceive how to bring the machine to perform next.  Meanwhile, he trusted to the twin agencies of vapor and fire to enlarge the purposes of a splendid technology.

    poetic         confidant  and     cloak      of blue

part of it   unnatural       about slavery     dashing the boat

     favors     a demoniac   then

             the bridge   loved by the  justice   phantasmagorie

As the adaptable mechanism began to recoil with some elasticity, projecting the warmth of an engine compelled to a congenial usage, it gathered both rhythm and speed.  Fascinated by the precise movements of the platforms and sloping tunnels, he overcame his anticipation of further technical experiment and concentrated on how the furnace-feeding shaft fitting directly into the magazine, combined with the operative’s judicious application of rotary pressure, seemed virtually to ensure the excellent discharge of electricity along every fiber of the thread being spun.

the body   mounts the bridge  gazes out   at   hidden secrets

      someone seizes          flashes   through the   ruins

his grasp   a tower with torches    grateful thanks  wrested it

   simultaneously   destroying    a last breath

As he began to bring the exquisite action of the automaton to halt, he registered some surprise at the difficulty he encountered in terminating all motion.  The machine seemed to resist.  As prime mover, he categorically refused all impetus to the wheels, but the wheels continued to spin.  So he went further, and withdrew support completely from the columns.  Yet the gears whirred, the expanding belts shivered, hardly impaired by the operative’s absconding.  Mightily disturbed, he yanked out the props he had deftly marshaled to various nexes to counteract gravity and lend stability to his purpose.  This finally elicited a whine and some weird whistling. He stood back, and waited, until the machine was entirely still; the thing was even more complex than he thought.

        young ruined abbeys     cannot tell   a desperate pardon

  from the other  tenement   his bosom     till it sinks

and   the mist rises   in a   slum  halo

one  girl is herself  and sings of the

                    escape from    a thicket   in flames

of a Holy   someone   accused of   kingdoms    and  spectacle

As he considered with misgiving the negative contingences of such a self-acting mechanism, he found himself also listing the compensatory advantages.  It now appeared quite possible that the engine could be brought to more cunning utilizations than he had ever dared hope.  After all, if horses needed to be stabled and fed and exercised, machinery needed its own type of care.  He accepted responsibility for a sensitive maintenance, especially as it presented itself as an opportunity for technological exploration, a sort of pure mechanical mathematics.  He wondered if the engine could be induced to perform vertically.  If adequately concentred, and, of course, balanced, and provided with a sufficient charge, he did not see any reason why it should not.  Indeed, a self-regulated motion might actually increase in velocity if the horizontal plane were abandoned.  He lifted the cooling frame and placed it on the floor, then raised the upper two-thirds parallel to himself as he stood.

      imploring     cutlasses of virtue

               the heroine     gesturing    with forgiveness

                                  and the missing spoon

with her and him  almost always   in the river

      his intentions a   barred room

As he set the point of the saw among the brushes veiling the cylinder, he felt the levers rise of their own accord.  Although blasting might eventually prove feasible, he proceeded at first delicately, driving the point with the least possible twist along the narrow bed where most condensation had collected, and through the drop-bottom of which he intended to win.  Confident by now that the saw itself understood the engine better than any operative could, he leaned back to give the serrated ridge free play.  The engine fell industriously into its unprecedented function without the slightest resistance, converting its recent aberrations into a punctual harmony.  With a gesture he hardly recognized as his own, he detached the brake-belt. The plying of the saw became fiercer, incessant.  Groans issued from somewhere, over the machine’s silence.

       him   in distress   like silver

             and  a bridal bark   in the sky

               a whole band  in quest  is himself

    then    he draws   how the cosmos   enters

He could feel the interior curvature begreasing itself with a lubricity that could not but do a mechanism good.  He had done his best, subordinating his own needs to devoted care of the machine.  As the slick surface, fluted lengthwise, grew narrower and longer, he admired its capacity for change. Having winnowed the coarser impurities, it had accelerated, shifting function towards the rhythm of a further distillation.

      in a forest  the girl  stealing a    complexity

          crushes          historical home   to feed   her lover

he sees  the bloody cottage                    fanciful tyranny

          someone    regards him           the food