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This grammatical machine was made by his elder brother, Cyrus Durand, to whose inventive genius we are indebted for great progress in the mechanic arts. His geometrical lathe, used in the processes of banknote engraving, is one of the most remarkable instruments known in the mechanical world. The idea of the grammar machine was not original with him ; he took it from an acquaintance and worked it out for practical application. In 1814, when eighteen years of age, Durand delivered a Fourth-of-July oration at the Presbyterian Church in Springfield, New Jersey, which was regarded by all his female acquaintances, old and young, as a masterpiece of thought and oratorical display. On the delivery of this oration, in which the "British Lion" was severely handled, in accordance with the spirit of the time, the audience and the orator marched in procession, accompanied by two of his brothers playing fife and drum. Such experiences served as a discipline, and filled out the slender opportunities of education.

Durand was mainly his own instructor. Except in the rudiments of engraving, he had no master, and not even afterwards in painting. Even in engraving, he began through his own unaided genius. In those times, in the back of the outer one of the usual double watch-cases, was placed a small watchmaker's card, 



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engraved on thin paper more or less ornamented. To produce one of these the young Durand hammered a copper cent thin and smooth enough to engrave on, and then made the tools with which to do the work. It was this effort which led to his pursuit of that art. A French gentleman, living at Elizabeth, on seeing this experiment, recommended sending the boy, when sixteen years old, to New York to learn engraving. In after years, at one of the evening receptions of the Academy of Design, when Durand, then president, was toasted and loudly called for, he made some remarks, and among other things said : "I began to love art when I was only so high," putting his hand down below the knee. The reporters were puzzled about expressing the idea. The French gentleman's advice was followed, and application was made to an engraver named Leney, an Englishman who charged $1,000 for taking him. This demand being too high for the Durand purse, he was apprenticed to Peter Maverick, an engraver of reputation at the time, with whom he remained till he was twenty-one (five years). He soon surpassed his master, many of the works bearing Maverick's name, having been chiefly, and some entirely, executed by the pupil. A noted example is the engraved portrait of Genl. Bainbridge. The dry and feeble execution of Maverick