Dear Mr. Kent:

I know little or nothing about machines, and therefore take the greatest pleasure in giving you my advice; for my experience is, that the less a person knows, the more free he is in giving his opinion. (Indeed, I find that in theology entire ignorance of the subject is the best qualification for strongly expressing one’s views; most people who discuss religion feeling as Sidney Smith did about the books he reviewed—which he said he never read because it prejudiced him so!)

Mr. Bianchi and I think the Monotype more useful than the Linotype, and you get a fairly good collection of types now on the Monotype. As to the minor technical advantages of one over the other, I am not competent to speak; but our opinion here has been that if we ever put in a machine—which at present we have not enough work (of the kind it does well and economically) to keep going—we should choose the Monotype. I don’t know how much steady work you have at the Museum; and it must be remembered, in buying a machine, that unless it is kept going steadily, it is an expensive investment. It is a good deal like having an auto-truck, hiring an expressman, or loading a messenger with parcels. If you can keep your auto-truck going all the time, it pays; but if you only have occasional packages, it is cheaper to hire an expressman or to employ a messenger. The hiring someone else —the outside printer—you do not wish to do. A messenger would be, in my analogy, like hand-setting as against machine-setting. I should think that a question to be considered very seriously. But no doubt you have studied this out, and know far better than I can why a machine—be it either one or the other—would be both economical and useful for your work.

As I finish this letter, I am haunted by a quotation from Froude, who concluded his early Lives of the Saints by saying, “I have now told you all that the angels know—more, perhaps, than the angels know”! To paraphrase it, I have told you all that I know, some things I think I know, and perhaps one or two things I don’t know; but in any case, it is well meant!

Very faithfully yours,

D.B. Updike (signature)