He tossed the chunk of soft wood in his hand measuringly, then, humming something utterly tuneless to my ears, set to work.

by high school he was basketballing with the best of an all-Negro league

Let a watch be contrived and constructed ever so ingeniously: be its parts ever so many, ever so complicated, ever so finely wrought, or artificially put together, it cannot go without a weight or spring, that is, without a force independent of, and ulteriour to, its mechanism.

Coordinate term: link farm