Edward Everett Hale

“ Hiero being struck with amazement at this, and entreating him to make good this assertion by actual experiment, and show some great weight moved by a small engine, he fixed upon a ship of burden out of the king's arsenal, which could not be drawn out of the dock without great labor by many men. Loading her with many passengers and a full freight, sitting himself the while far off, with no great endeavor, but only holding the head of the pulley in his hand and drawing the cord by degrees, he drew the ship in a straight line, as smoothly and evenly as if she had been in the sea. ”

“ Though I might here enlarge on the productions of Benvenuto, who always shewed himself a man of great spirit and vivacity, bold, active, enterprising, and formidable to his enemies,—a man, in short, who knew as well how to speak to princes as to exert himself in his art,—I shall add nothing further, since he has written an account of his life and works, and a treatise on goldsmith's work as well as on casting statues and many other subjects, with more art and eloquence than it is possible for me to imitate. ”

“ Thus, step by step, Newcomen's engine grew in power and efficiency, and became more and more complete as a self-acting machine. It will be observed that, like all other inventions, it was not the product of any one man's ingenuity, but of many. One contributed one improvement, and another another. The essential features of the atmospheric engine were not new. The piston and cylinder had been known as long ago as the time of Hero. The expansive force of steam and the creation of a vacuum by its condensation had been known to the Marquis of Worcester, Savery, Papin, and many more. ”

“ It delineates American life so graphically that we feel as if Mr. Hale must have seen every rood of ground he describes, and must have known personally every character he so cleverly depicts. In his hearty fellowship with young people lies his great power. The story is permeated with a spirit of glad-heartedness and elasticity which in this hurried, anxious, money-making age it is most refreshing to meet with in any one out of his teens ”

“ The men working at the ordinary machine had only begun to drive. It took them upward of twelve hours to complete the driving of their pile!
Such a saving of time in the performance of similar work—by steam versus manual labor—had never before been witnessed. The energetic action of the steam-hammer, sitting on the shoulders of the pile high up aloft, and following it suddenly down, the rapidly hammered blows keeping time with the flashing out of the waste steam at the end of each stroke, was indeed a remarkable sight. ”

“ Now really, Uncle Fritz, you mustn't laugh; but do you not think that most of the people whose lives we read have to begin horridly? They have to be beaten when they are apprentices, or their fathers and mothers have to die, or they have to walk through Philadelphia with loaves of bread under their arms, or to be brought up in poor-houses or something. Now, nothing of that sort happened to my inventor. ”

“ I was present at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, on Sept. 15, 1830. Every one knows the success of the undertaking. Railways became the rage. They were projected in every possible direction; and when made, locomotives were required to work them. When George Stephenson was engaged in building his first locomotive, at Killingworth, he was greatly hampered, not only by the want of handy mechanics, but by the want of efficient tools. But he did the best that he could. His genius overcame difficulties. ”

“ Voltaire in France had a great laboratory made for him in which he passed some years in chemical experiments. It was the age, too, of great inventions,—of the application of physical forces to the life of man. The invention of the steam-engine by Watt, and the applications of it to the locomotive and the steamboat, came along toward the end of this period, and marked the work of the greatest men. But every one could not invent a steam-engine. ”

“ Imagine Columbus within sight of the new world, and his obstinate crew declaring it was only a mirage, and refusing to row him ashore. Never was mortal man surer that he had a fortune in his hand, than Charles Goodyear was when he would take a piece of scorched and dingy India-rubber from his pocket and expound its marvellous properties [Pg 290] to a group of incredulous villagers. Sure also was he that he was just upon the point of a practicable success. Give him but an oven and would he not turn you out fire-proof and cold-proof India-rubber, as fast as a baker can produce loaves of bread? ”

“ In August, 1836, the Bridgewater Foundry was in complete and efficient action. The engine ordered at Londonderry was at once put in hand, and the concern was fairly started in its long career of prosperity. The wooden workshops had been erected upon the grass, but the greensward soon disappeared. The hum of the driving-belts, the whirl of the machinery, the sound of the hammer upon the anvil, gave the place an air of busy activity. As work increased, workmen multiplied. ”

“ Spirits, at the same time, are to be fired by a spark sent from side to side through the river, without any other conductor than the water; an experiment which we some time since performed, to the amazement of many. A turkey is to be killed for our dinner by the electrical shock, and roasted by the electrical jack, before a fire kindled by the electrified bottle; when the healths of all the famous electricians in England, Holland, France, and Germany are to be drank in electrified bumpers, under the discharge of guns from the electrical battery. ”

“ In the middle of the sixteenth century remarkable historical paintings were executed in faience, upon huge plaques. All the cities of Italy vied with each other in producing wonders in this sort of work; it is from one of them, Faenza, that it takes its name. The method of making the enamel was a deep secret; but Bernard Palissy, with long patience and after many failures, succeeded in discovering it,—or, rather, in inventing for himself a new method, which in some respects excelled the old. ”

“ And Edgeworth, though I had not thought of him before, is very fit to be one of our inventors, not so much for his individual accomplishments, which were little more than curious,—telegraph and all,—as for being a good representative of his age. Those of you who know a little of the century between 1750 and 1850 know that it was an age to which many of the secrets of physical science were being opened for the first time. Everybody was going back to Nature to see what he could learn from her. This movement swept all over France and England. ”

“ Whitney made application to Congress for the renewal of his patent for the cotton-gin. In his memorial he presented a history of the struggles he had been forced to encounter in defence of his right, observing that he had been unable to obtain any decision on the merits of his claim until he had been eleven years in the law, and thirteen years of his patent term had expired. He sets forth that his invention had been a source of opulence to thousands of the citizens of the United States; that, as a labor-saving machine, it would enable one man to perform the work of a thousand men ”

“ There are few books of travel which combine in a romance of true love so many touches of the real life of many people, in glimpses of happy homes, in pictures of scenery and sunset, as the beautiful panorama unrolled before us from the windows of this Pullman car. ”

“ I had caused my furnace to be filled with several pieces of brass and bronze, and heaped them upon one another in the manner taught us by our art, taking particular care to leave a passage for the flames, that the [Pg 75] metal might the sooner assume its color, and dissolve into a fluid. Thus, with great alacrity, I excited my men to lay on the pine-wood, which, because of the oiliness of the resinous matter that oozes from the pine-tree and that my furnace was admirably well made, burned at such a rate that I was continually obliged to run to and fro, which greatly fatigued me. ”

“ Indeed, if our winter had been as long as poor Captain Greely's was, and if you had met me every week, we should have had a new invention for each one. Here are the telephone and the telegraph. Here is the use of the electric light. Here is the sewing-machine, with all its nice details, like the button-hole maker. Nay, every button is made by its own machinery. Here are carpets one quarter cheaper than they were only four years ago; cotton cloths made more by machinery and less by hand labor; nay, they tell us that the cotton is to be picked by a machine before long. ”

“ Such books as Poole's Index, Watt's and Brunet's Bibliographies, and the New American Indexes, prepared with such care by the Librarians' Association, are at hand in almost all the Public Libraries; and the librarians will always be glad to encourage intelligent readers in the use of them.
I should be sorry, in closing the series, not to bear my testimony to the value of the Public Library system, still so new to us, in raising the standard of thought and education. For thirty years I have had more or less to do with classes of intelligent young people who have met for study. ”

“ But, actually, the men at Bunker Hill rested over the rail-fence old muskets which had been used in Queen Anne's time; and to this day a 'Queen's arm' is a provincial phrase, in New England, for one of these old weapons, not yet forgotten. That inability to improve its own condition comes to a people which lets another nation do its manufacturing for it. You see much the same thing in Turkey and French Canada. Just as soon as they were thrown on their own resources here, they began to invent."
"But," said Fergus, "there was certainly one great American inventor before that time." ”

“ Fergus said that in old times inventors were not always treated very kindly. If people thought they were sorcerers, or in league with the Devil, they did not care much for the invention.
Uncle Fritz said they would find plenty of instances of the persecution of inventors, even to quite a late date. It is impossible, of course, to say how many good things were lost to the world by the pig-headedness which discouraged new inventions. ”

“ There is no probability that the patentee, if the term of his patent were extended for twenty years, would ever obtain for his invention one half as much as many an individual will gain by use of it. Up to the present time, the whole amount of what he has acquired from this source (after deducting his expenses) does not exceed one half the sum which a single individual has gained by the use of the machine in one year. It is true that considerable sums have been obtained from some of the States where the machine is used ”

“ I replied that when I attentively considered the several creatures that fly, and thought of effecting by art what they do by the force of nature, I did not find one so fit to imitate as the bat. As soon as the poor man heard mention made of a bat, he cried out aloud, 'It is very true! a bat is the thing.' He then addressed himself to me, and said, 'Benvenuto, if you had the opportunity, would you have the heart to make an attempt to fly?' I answered that if he would give me leave, I had courage enough to attempt to fly by means of a pair of wings waxed over. ”

“ We had plenty to do. My workshop was fully equipped. My hobbies were there, and I could work them to my heart's content. The walls of our various rooms were soon hung with pictures and other works of art, suggestive of many pleasant associations of former days. Our library bookcase was crowded with old friends in the shape of books that had been read and re-read many times, until they had almost become part of ourselves. Old Lancashire friends made their way to us when "up in town," and expressed themselves delighted with our pleasant house and its beautiful surroundings. ”

“ Uncle Fritz said yes to all her questions, but he said that they did not cover the whole matter. The difference between a magician and a man of science involves these habits: the magician keeps secret what he knows, while the man of science discloses all he learns. Then the magician affected to have spiritual power at command, while the man of science only affects to use what he calls physical powers. ”

“ Nevertheless, the engine readily worked with ten and a half pounds pressure on the inch, and the piston lifted a weight of fourteen pounds. The improvement of the cylinder and piston continued Watt's chief difficulty, and taxed his ingenuity to the utmost. At so low an ebb was the art of making cylinders that the one he used was not bored, but hammered, the collective mechanical skill of Glasgow being then unequal to the boring of a cylinder of the simplest kind; nor, indeed, did the necessary appliances for the purpose then exist anywhere else. ”

“ If thou canst speak no wiser, they shall sleep till doom's day for me. Time is: I know Time is, and that thou shall hear, good man Brazen face." And with this he sang him a song to his own music as to times and seasons, and went on, "Do you tell us, Copper-nose, when Time is? I hope we Scholars know our Times, when to drink drunk, when to kiss our hostess, when to go on her score, and when to pay it, that time comes seldom." ”

“ If the people of New England were not the most "neighborly" people in the world, his family must have starved, or he must have given up his experiments. But, with all the generosity of his neighbors, his children were often sick, hungry, and cold, without medicine, food, or fuel. One witness testifies: "I found, in 1839, that they had not fuel to burn nor food to eat, and did not know where to get a morsel of food from one day to another, unless it was sent in to them." We can neither justify nor condemn their father. ”