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specialized reading, a new line even more insoluble
 

I’ve been puttering around in a new line,
                                                                      and it’s going good .
                                                imagination no longer has the resource of picturing wires comparatively
                          restricted compass of a transatlantic liner —
even along which the invisible message glides ...

properly

“...Well, you’ve been too busy for anything but specialized reading, I guess. I’ve been puttering away in a new line, and its going good...”
      “I designed it,” said Tibbetts. “That course ‘Old Straight-Front’ was working on so secretively was I.C.S. Architecture. Helped some; what?”

and

      The imagination no longer has the resource of picturing wires along which the invisible message glides : the mystery is even more insoluble, more poetic; and we must have recourse to the winds to explain the new miracle. // Picture the situation... comparatively restricted compass of a transatlantic liner — even

ex twinned search (“puttering” + “invisible”), yielding the above thus —

— involving, respectively,
Olin L. Lyman (Drawings by J. J. Gould), “Old Straight-Front” (pp 1-3, 9-10) and
OCR cross-column misconstrual at Maurice LeBlanc, “The Arrest of Lupin.” (pp 10-13) in
Ambition : A Journal of Inspiration to Self Help (Published at the International Correspondence Schools, Scranton, Penn) 9:11 (November 1914) : 10 : link
same, via hathitrust : link

The expression puttering appears three times in this same volume, not surprisingly given the nature of the publication. Each is of interest.
Some information on ICS (as it was then known) at wikipedia : link

and/or search “I.C.S. Reference Library” : link (google books)
ditto (hathitrust)
 

13 December 2022