Lloyd Osbourne

“ You couldn't build a house that cost less than ten thousand; you couldn't sell liquor, open a shop or hotel, manufacture anything, teach music, keeps pigs, burn soft coal, expose advertisements, dig wells or cesspools, mine, or generate acetylene gas. Forty lawyers had spent years in tying the infant Studdingham into bow-knots, and concocting what papa called "a deed of don'ts." Their success had been a matter of general congratulation, and, after nine years, it was left to this Marsden to find a crack in the legal wall. He was the manufacturer, proprietor, and inventor of the Bo-peep Puzzle! ”

“ The only apparent method of hurting him was to attack him from the outside—bust the puzzle business, and drive him into bankruptcy. But he hadn't been with us a month before he launched "Dobbin, Dobbin, Oh, Where's Dobbin?" and successfully maddened a continent for a second time. I gave papa one of the dollar sizes as a birthday present, but he didn't see any joke in it, and got blacker than a thundercloud. He was sorer than ever about losing the Vincents, and never passed the Howard place without gritting his teeth.
We all waited for Marsden to come out and startle us. ”

“ Then, when he had screwed down the plug, wired up, and put back the hood covers, he was simply forced to crank up and let me go.
"I suppose it is good-by forever?" he said, looking at me in the most appealing manner, and holding to the car as though it might suddenly jump up and fly away.
"I am afraid it is, Mr. Marsden," I said, glad to make the matter quite plain. "And much obliged for your kindness," and with that I speeded up, and left him disconsolately in the road. I peeped back through my little window, and felt quite sorry for him. ”

“ I dig and dig, and the deeper I get the less I appear to accomplish. To put it into common English, I am engaged in electrical research, not of the profitable, ingenious, touch-the-button kind, but in the study of some great basic, perhaps insoluble, phenomena that we have been content to name and then ignore—a scientific procedure more universal than you'd think. ”

“ I suppose he caught me glancing at the spark plug, for he suddenly pulled himself up, and his face changed.
"I fear I have taken a great liberty in telling you all this," he went on, in an earnest, troubled tone. "You must make allowances for a man who sees no one—a scientific Crusoe on a desert island, who, in the absorption of one great dominating idea, has forgotten all the petty rules, and, worse still, even runs the risk of proving himself a bore. ”

“ Heaven only knows where he would have got to, because— Oh, well, because— A girl doesn't need a sixth sense to tell her when a man— It seemed a happy thought to turn his electrical abilities to account by asking him to look at my buzzer, and thus sidetrack any more embarrassing confidences. ”