Читать книгу Stories of Invention, Told by Inventors and their Friends - Edward Everett Hale - Страница 5

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There is, or is supposed to be, somewhere in Norfolk County in Massachusetts, in the neighborhood of the city of Boston, a rambling old house which in its day belonged to the Oliver family. I am afraid they were most of them sad Tories in their time; and I am not sure but these very windows could tell the story of one or another brick-bat thrown through them, as one or another committee of the people requested one or another Oliver, of the old times, to resign one or another royal commission. But a very peaceful Rowland has taken the place of those rebellious old Olivers.

This comfortable old house is now known to many young people as the home of a somewhat garrulous old gentleman whom they call Uncle Fritz. His real name is Frederick Ingham. He has had a checkered life, but it has evidently been a happy one. Once he was in the regular United States Navy. For a long time he was a preacher in the Sandemanian connection, where they have no ordained ministers. In Garibaldi's time he was a colonel in the patriot service in Italy. In our civil war he held a command in the national volunteer navy; and his scientific skill and passion for adventure called him at one time across "the Great American Desert," and at another time across Siberia, in the business of constructing telegraphs. In point of fact, he is not the relation of any one of the five-and-twenty young people who call him Uncle Fritz. But he pets them, and they pet him. They like to make him a regular visit once a week, as the winter goes by. And the habit has grown up, of their reading with him, quite regularly, on some subject selected at their first meeting after they return from the country. Either at Lady Oliver's house, as his winter home is called, or at Little Crastis, where he spends his summers, those selections for reading have been made, which have been published in a form similar to that of the book which the reader holds in his hand.

The reader may or may not have seen these books—so much the worse for him if he have not—but that omission of his may be easily repaired. There are four of them: Stories of War told by Soldiers; Stories of the Sea told by Sailors; Stories of Adventure told by Adventurers; Stories of Discovery told by Discoverers.

Since the regular meetings began, of which these books are the history, the circle of visitors has changed more or less, as most circles will, in five years. Some of those who met are now in another world. Some of the boys have grown to be so much like men, that they are "subduing the world," as Uncle Fritz would say, in their several places, and that they write home, from other latitudes and longitudes, of the Discoveries and Adventures in which they have themselves been leaders. But younger sisters and brothers take the places of older brothers and sisters. The club—for it really is one—is popular, Lady Oliver's house is large, and Uncle Fritz is hospitable. He says himself that there is always room for more; and Ellen Flaherty, or whoever else is the reigning queen in the kitchen, never complains that the demand is too great for her "waffles."

Last fall, when the young people made their first appearance, the week before Thanksgiving day, after the new-comers had been presented to Uncle Fritz, and a chair or two had been brought in from the dining-room to make provision for the extra number of guests, it proved that, on the way out, John Coram, who is Tom Coram's nephew, had been talking with Helen, who is one of the old Boston Champernoons, about the change of Boston since his uncle's early days.

"I told her," said he to Uncle Fritz, "that Mr. Allerton was called 'the last of the merchants,' and he is dead now."

"That was a pet phrase of his," said Uncle Fritz. "He meant that his house, with its immense resources, simply bought and sold. He was away for many years once. When he returned, he found that the chief of his affairs had made an investment, from motives of public spirit, in a Western railroad. 'I thought we were merchants,' said the fine old man, disapproving. As he turned over page after page of the account, he found at last that the whole investment had been lost. 'I am glad of that,' said he; 'you will remember now that we are merchants.'"

"But surely my father is a merchant," said Julius. "He calls himself a merchant, he is put down as a merchant in the Directory, and he buys and sells, if that makes a man a merchant."

"All that is true," said Uncle Fritz. "But your father also invests money in railroads; so far he is engaged in transportation. He is a stockholder and a director in the Hecla Woollen Mills at Bromwich; so far he is a manufacturer. He told me, the other day, that he had been encouraging my little friend Griffiths, who is experimenting in the conservation of electric power; so far he is an inventor, or a patron of inventions.

"In substance, what Mr. Allerton meant when he said 'I thought we were merchants,' was this: he meant that that firm simply bought from people who wished to sell, and sold to people who wished to buy.

"The fact, that almost every man of enterprise in Massachusetts is now to a certain extent a manufacturer, shows that a great change has come over people here since the beginning of this century."

"Those were the days of Mr. Cleveland's adventures, and Mr. Forbes's," said Hugh.

He alluded to the trade in the Pacific, in which these gentlemen shared, as may be read in Stories of Adventure.

Uncle Fritz said, "Yes." He said that the patient love of Great Britain for her colonies forbade us here from making so much as a hat or a hob-nail while we were colonies, as it would gladly do again now. He said that the New Englanders had a great deal of adventurous old Norse blood in their veins, that they had plenty of ship-timber and tar. If they could not make hob-nails they could make ships; and they made very good ships before they had been in New England ten years.

Luckily for us, soon after the country became a country, near a hundred years ago, the quarrels of Europe were such, that if an English ship carried produce of the West Indies or China to Europe, France seized, if she could, ship and cargo; if a French ship carried them, English cruisers seized ship and cargo, if they could. So it happened that the American ships and the American sailors, who were not at war with England and were not at war with France, were able to carry the stores which were wanted by all the world. The wars of Napoleon were thus a steady bounty for the benefit of the commerce of America. When they were well over, we had become so well trained to commerce here, that we could build the best ships in the world; and we thought we had the best seamen in the world—certainly there were no better. Under such a stimulus, and what followed it, our commerce, as measured by the tonnage of our ships, was as large as that of any nation, and, if measured by the miles sailed, was probably larger.

All this prosperity to merchants was broken up by the War of 1812, between the United States and Great Britain. For two years and a half, then, our intercourse with Europe was almost cut off; for the English cruisers now captured our vessels whenever they could find them. At last we had to make our own hob-nails, our guns, our cannon, our cotton cloth, and our woollen cloth, if we meant to have any at all. The farmers' wives and daughters had always had the traditions of spinning and weaving.

When Colonel Ingham said this, Blanche nodded to Mary and Mary to Blanche.

"That means," said the Colonel, "that you have brought dear old mother Tucker's spinning-wheel downstairs, and have it in the corner behind your piano, does it not?"

Blanche laughed, and said that was just what she meant.

"It does very well in 'Martha,'" said the Colonel. "And can you spin, Blanche?"

Blanche rather surprised him by saying that she could, and the Colonel went on with his lecture. Fergus, who is very proud of Blanche, slipped out of the room, but was back after a minute, and no one missed him.

Here in Massachusetts some of the most skilful merchants—Appletons, Perkinses, and Lawrences—joined hand with brave inventors like Slater and Treadwell, and sent out to England for skilful manufacturers like Crompton and Boott; thus there sprung up the gigantic system of manufacture, which seems to you children a thing of course. Oddly enough, the Southern States, which had always hated New England and New England commerce, and had done their best to destroy it when they had a chance, were very eager to secure a home-market for Southern cotton; and thus, for many years after the war, they kept up such high protective duties that foreign goods were very dear in America, and the New England manufacturers had all the better prices.

While Uncle Fritz was saying this in substance, Ransom, the old servant, appeared with a spinning-wheel from Colonel Ingham's music-room. The children had had it for some charades. Kate Fogarty, the seamstress of the Colonel's household, followed, laughing, with a great hank of flax; and when the Colonel stopped at the interruption, Fergus said—

"I thought, Uncle Fritz, they would all like to see how well Blanche spins; so I asked Ransom to bring in the wheel."

And Blanche sat down without any coaxing, and made her wheel fly very prettily, and spun her linen thread as well as her great-grandmamma would have done. Colonel Ingham was delighted; and so were all the children, half of whom had never seen any hand-spinning before. All of them had seen cotton and wool spun in factories; in fact, half of them had eaten their daily bread that day, from the profit of the factories that for ten hours of every day do such spinning.

"Now, you see," said the well-pleased Colonel, "Blanche spins that flax exactly as her grandmother nine generations back spun it. She spins it exactly as Mrs. Dudley spun it in the old house where Dr. Paterson's church stands. It is strange enough, but for one hundred and fifty years there seems to have been no passion for invention among the New Englanders. Now they are called a most inventive people, and that bad word has been coined for them and such as they.

"But all this is of the last century. It was as soon as they were thrown on their own resources that they began to invent. Eli Whitney, a Worcester County boy, graduated at Yale College in 1791. He went to Georgia at once, to be a tutor in a planter's family; but before he arrived, the planter had another tutor. This was a fortunate chance for the world; for poor Whitney, disappointed, went to spend the winter at the house of Mrs. General Greene. One day, at dinner, some guests of hers said that cotton could never be exported with profit unless a machine could be made to separate the seeds from the 'wool.' 'If you want anything invented,' said Mrs. Greene, 'ask my young friend Mr. Whitney; he will invent anything for you.' Whitney had then never seen cotton unmanufactured. But he went to work; and before he was one year out of college, he had invented the cotton-gin, which created an enormous product of cotton, and, in fact, changed the direction of the commerce of the world.

"Well, you know about other inventions. Robert Fulton, who built the first effective steamboat, was born in Pennsylvania the same year Whitney was born in Massachusetts.

"Hector, you are fond of imaginary conversations: write one in which Whitney and Fulton meet, when each is twenty-one; let Daniel Boone look in on them, and prophesy to them the future of the country, and how much it is to owe to them and to theirs."

"I think Blanche had better write it—in a ballad," said Hector, laughing. "It shall be an old crone spinning; and as she turns her wheel she shall describe the Ætna Factory at Watertown."

"There shall be a refrain," said Wallace—

"'Turn my wheel gayly;

Spin, flax, spin.'"

"No," said Hatty; "the refrain shall be

'Four per cent in six months,

Eight per cent in twelve.'

We are to go to Europe if the Vesuvius Mills pay a dividend. But if they pass, I believe I am to scrub floors in my vacation."

"Very well," said Uncle Fritz, recalling them to the subject they had started on. "All this is enough to show you how it is that you, who are all New Englanders, are no longer seafaring boys or girls, exclusively or even principally. Your great-grandmother, Alice, saved the lives of all the crew of a Bristol trader, by going out in her father's boat and taking her through the crooked passage between the Brewsters. You would be glad to do it, but I am afraid you cannot."

"I should rather encourage those who go to do it," said Alice, demurely, repeating one of their familiar jokes.

"And your great-grandfather, Seth, is the Hunt who discovered Hunt's Reef in the Philippines. I am afraid you cannot place it on the map."

"I know I cannot," said Seth, bravely.

"No," said the old gentleman. "But all the same the reef is there. I came to an anchor in the 'Calypso,' waiting for a southwest wind, in sight of the breakers over it. And I wish we had the pineapples the black people sold us there.

"All the same the New Englanders are good for something. Ten years hence, you boys will be doing what your fathers are doing—subduing the world, and making it to be more what God wants it to be. And you will not work at arms' length, as they did, nor with your own muscles."

"We have Aladdin's lamp," said Mary, laughing.

"And his ring," said Susie. "I always liked the ring one better than the lamp one, though he was not so strong."

"He is prettier in the pictures," said George.

"Yes," said the Colonel; "we have stronger Genii than Aladdin had, and better machinery than Prince Camaralzaman."

"I heard some one say that Mr. Corliss had added twenty-seven per cent to the working power of the world by his cut-off," said Fergus.

The Colonel said he believed that was true. And this was a good illustration of what one persevering and intelligent man can do in bringing in the larger life and nobler purpose of the Kingdom of Heaven. Such a man makes men cease from labor, which is always irksome, and work with God. This is always ennobling.

"I am ashamed to say that I do not know what a cut-off is," said Alice, who, like Seth, had been trained to "confess ignorance."

"I was going to say so," said John Rodman.

"And I—and I—and I," said quite a little chorus.

"We must make up a party, the first pleasant day, and go and see the stationary engine which pumps this water for us." So the Colonel met their confessions.

"But does not all this indicate that we might spend a few days in looking up inventions?"

"I think we ought to," said Hatty. "Certainly we ought, if the Vesuvius pays. Imagine me at Manchester. Imagine John Bright taking me through his own mill, and saying to me, 'This is the rover we like best, on the whole. Do you use this in America?' Imagine me forced to reply that I do not know a rover when I see one, and could not tell a 'slubber' from a 'picker.'"

The others laughed, and confessed equal ignorance. "Only, John Bright has no mills in Manchester, Hatty."

"Well, they are somewhere; and I must not eat the bread of the Vesuvius slubbers, and not know something of the way in which slubbers came to be."

"Very well," said Uncle Fritz, as usual recalling the conversation to sanity. "Whom shall we read about first?"

"Tubal Cain first," said Fergus. "He seems to have been the first of the crew."

"It was not he who found out witty inventions," said Fanchon, in a mock aside.

"I should begin with Archimedes," said Uncle Fritz.

"Excellent!" said Fergus; "and then may we not burn up old Fogarty's barn with burning-glasses?"

The children dislike Fogarty, and his barn is an eyesore to them. It stands just beyond the hedge of the Lady Oliver garden.

"I thank Archimedes every time I take a warm bath. Did he not invent hot baths?"

"What nonsense! He was killed by Caligula in one."

"You shall not talk such stuff.—Uncle Fritz, what books shall I bring you?"

It would seem as if, perhaps, Uncle Fritz had led the conversation in the direction it had taken. At least it proved that, all together on the rolling book-rack which Mr. Perkins gave him, were the account of Archimedes in the Cyclopædia Britannica, the account in the French Universal Biography, the life in La Rousse's Cyclopædia, Plutarch's Lives, and a volume of Livy in the Latin. From these together, Uncle Fritz, and the boys and girls whom he selected, made out this little history of Archimedes.