Habit only sharpened his inventor's gusto in contrivance, in
triumphant artifice, in the Odyssean subtleties, by which wires are
taught to speak, and iron hands to weave, and the slender ship to
brave and to outstrip the tempest. To the ignorant the great
results alone are admirable; to the knowing, and to Fleeming in
particular, rather the infinite device and sleight of hand that
made them possible.

A notion was current at the time that, in such a shop as
Fairbairn's, a pupil would never be popular unless he drank with
the workmen and imitated them in speech and manner. Fleeming, who
would do none of these things, they accepted as a friend and
companion; and this was the subject of remark in Manchester, where
some memory of it lingers till to-day. He thought it one of the
advantages of his profession to be brought into a close relation
with the working classes; and for the skilled artisan he had a
great esteem, liking his company, his virtues, and his taste in
some of the arts. But he knew the classes too well to regard them,
like a platform speaker, in a lump. He drew, on the other hand,
broad distinctions; and it was his profound sense of the difference
between one working man and another that led him to devote so much
time, in later days, to the furtherance of technical education. In
1852 he had occasion to see both men and masters at their worst, in
the excitement of a strike; and very foolishly (after their custom)
both would seem to have behaved. Beginning with a fair show of
justice on either side, the masters stultified their cause by
obstinate impolicy, and the men disgraced their order by acts of
outrage. 'On Wednesday last,' writes Fleeming, 'about three
thousand banded round Fairbairn's door at 6 o'clock: men, women,
and children, factory boys and girls, the lowest of the low in a