He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had
one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He
was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, MULTUM IN
PARVO, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior--though a little
swelled--of a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of
various sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls,
pens, rulers, nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors
wanted to use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do
was to open that part of him, and the screw was fast: or if for
tweezers, take him up by the legs, and there they were.
Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,
was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have
a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow
anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of
quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But
there it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years or
more. And this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning
life-principle in him; this it was, that kept him a great part of the
time soliloquizing; but only like an unreasoning wheel, which also
hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was a sentry-box and this
soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to keep himself
awake.
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