Explore "John Brent" by Theodore Winthrop on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was with much curiosity and interest in Padiham that I stepped down into the basement, and entered his shop. I reverence as much a great mechanic, in degree, perhaps in kind, as I do any great seer into the mysteries of Nature. He is a king, whoever can wield the great forces where other men have not the power. And none can control material forces without a profound knowledge, stated or unstated, of the great masterly laws that order every organism, from dust to man and a man-freighted world. A great mechanic ranks with the great chiefs of his time, prophets, poets, orators, statesmen.
Padiham was in his shop at work. No mistaking him. A stunted, iron-gray man, not misshapen, but only shut together, like a one-barrelled opera-glass.