Famous Days in the Century of InventionStone, Gertrude L. (Gertrude Lincoln)
History
Famous Days in the Century of Invention
Stone, Gertrude L. (Gertrude Lincoln)
Inventions
"I think you're a little severe," answered her husband. "But you
won't be surprised to know that he's sent to Marshfield that handsome
thoroughbred that he drove Webster to the court house with, because
Webster admired the animal so much."
"Just exactly like him!" was the response. "He'll probably wish some
day he had the money that colt would bring."
Lucy did not go to Trenton again for eight years. On her next visit,
strangely enough, Grandfather's household was again talking of the
beloved, unpractical dreamer, who by this time had sacrificed his life
in the interests of humanity. For Mr. Goodyear had come to the end of
his useful, honored, but difficult career. In spite of his triumphant
success, his health had been permanently broken by hard work and worry,
and his last years had not been entirely free from the occasional
threatenings of poverty.
Indeed, by an unlucky circumstance, again his misfortune but not his
fault, he was thrown once more for a short time into a debtors' prison
when he was visiting France on a business trip. But the friends who
knew him pitied him, trusted him, and honored him to the end; and
though Lucy Hobart is now almost seventy-eight years old and has seen
most of the prominent Americans of the later nineteenth century, she
remembers no one who worked harder or suffered more for the good of
humanity than the undaunted Goodyear who insisted, "If it is to be
done, it must be done and it will be done. Somebody will yet thank me
for it."
THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING
PART I
On the very first day of a Christmas vacation about forty years ago
Jimmie Granger broke his leg coasting. That meant six weeks in bed
and no more of the wonderful coasting of that winter. Jimmie was only
twelve years old, and he found it hard to lie still and be cheerful
while the other fellows were having so much fun. Every day seemed a
week long until he was allowed to sit up; even then each seemed three
times as long as usual.
Jimmie's Uncle Francis was so sorry for his unlucky little nephew
that he always brought something "to kill time" when he came to spend
Sunday at Jimmie's home just outside the big city. Two weeks after the
accident Jimmie received from his Uncle Francis the present he liked
best of all. It was a small printing press, something entirely new to
Jimmie, who had never seen one before, and never had thought very much
about how books and newspapers are actually made.
"If you'll print me every week until you can walk again the _Home
Record_, a newspaper page four columns wide and ten inches long, giving
the news of the house, and of the neighborhood, too, if you like, I'll
give you another double runner, a better sled than the old broken one."
"Oh, not another double runner! You don't want him to break the other
leg!" cried Jimmie's mother.
"Of course not; but you don't want him to stop coasting, do you?" Uncle
Francis asked his sister.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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