In Sunlight and in Shadow by Mark Helprin Page A

they could never come to agreement, because it was neither.
    Production was arranged in a circle. At the left of the freight elevator, purchased leather was received, inspected, sorted, and held for the short term if it were soon to be used. Each flat or roll was viewed under incandescent, fluorescent, ultraviolet, and natural south light because north light was too even. The buyer, who had seen it before, used his hands and eyes and could tell certain things by smell. The next step was the cutting room, where long-experienced cutters placed their patterns on the leather so that the finer surfaces would be exposed most conspicuously in the final product.
    The cut and patterned leather then went to the twenty-two leathersmiths according to their specialties, and they did the bending, fitting, and stitching, mating the occasional wood frames provided by the joiner, and the brass and nickel hardware provided by the metal fabricators, to the briefcase, handbag, belt, or valise. Wallets, portfolios, and blotters required neither wood nor brass. The leathersmithing stage was by far the most time-consuming and took up the most physical space, with each leatherworker stitching, cutting, planing at his own capacious bench, his bank of machines, and his cabinet of tools.
    In the next step, the leather was stained, dried, waxed, and polished. Then it sat and breathed for a while in an area between the wood and metal shops until it was wheeled past the business offices in the middle of the north side and brought to the boxer and packer, who put each item in a felt bag, wrapped it in crisp tissue paper, and placed it in a deep brown, navy blue, and gold Copeland Leather box. These were then stored in a set of large rooms with high shelves, and were eventually packed into cartons for shipment to accounts all over the country and the world, not least the Copeland Leather store on Madison Avenue just north of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Villard Houses. There, two ancient Yankees, though one was pretty much Dutch, gentlemen’s gentlemen whom Meyer Copeland had pirated from Brooks Brothers, somehow did a land-office business at a slow and dignified pace. Working on commission, they did very well, as they deserved, for they were the face of Copeland Leather to its loyal and habitual clientele.
    Henry Livingston, the one who despite his name was pretty much Dutch, spoke in the ancient and elevated New York dialect in which Catherine spoke. And he knew how to use his speech as a kind of lullaby by which to mesmerize into buying briefcases the stockbrokers, lawyers, and rentiers who had come in for just a wallet. Both salesmen, if one could call them that, were silver-templed and tall, their heads held erect and thrown back like a pigeon’s. Henry Livingston’s colleague, Thaxton Thrale, was as intimidating as the headmaster of Groton or St. Paul’s, as tall as a Masai, and as dour as a hogshead of lemon juice. His almost total silence, in combination with his doubting, provisionally contemptuous glance, made the carriage trade so desperate for his approval that they spent money like demons. That was the trick. Henry was the soft cop and Thaxton the hard. Henry lived on Park Avenue, and Thaxton in Ardsley, in a greystone house, with a pale and terrified wife who jumped like a cat when he twitched, and three children who called him
sir.
    Though Harry often stopped by the store to see how things were going, and though ultimately he was in control, they were to the company what chiefs are to the navy, of low rank but admirals in their own right.
     
    Cornell had known Harry since the infant Harry had learned to walk, and had always been as affectionately tough with him as an uncle. “Well,” he said without looking up, as Harry swept into the office on Monday morning, ruddy and smelling of chlorine, “it’s sleeping beauty.”
    “I wasn’t sleeping, I was swimming.”
    “I know. I can smell the chlorine.”
    “What am I supposed to