“Phelps and Zieber were satisfied that it would work. I had no money. Zieber offered forty dollars to build a model machine. Phelps offered his best endeavors to carry out my plan and make the model in his shop. If successful we were to share equally. I worked at it day and night, sleeping but three or four hours out of the twenty-four, and eating generally but once a day, as I knew I must make it for the forty dollars, or not get it at all. “The machine was completed in eleven days. About nine o’clock in the evening we got the parts together, and tried it. It did not sew. The workmen, exhausted with almost unremitting work, pronounced it a failure, and left me one by one. [Illustration: DESERTED BUT DETERMINED. ] “Zieber held the lamp, and I continued to try the machine; but anxiety and incessant work had made me nervous, and I could not get tight stitches. Sick at heart, about midnight we started for our hotel. On the way we sat down on a pile of boards, and Zieber mentioned that the loose loops of thread were on the upper side of the cloth. It flashed upon me that we had forgotten to adjust the tension on the needle-thread. We went back, adjusted the tension, tried the machine, sewed five stitches perfectly, and the thread snapped. But that was enough.” Persistent efforts have been made by interested parties to create an impression upon the public mind that it was Mr. Howe who first evolved order out of the chaotic essentials of the sewing machine and brought it into practical use. Of this let the reader judge for himself, after comparing the features of each machine set forth below. Let him note the features that are still preserved in every successful sewing machine and those which have been abandoned as practically worthless, and he will find little difficulty in settling for himself the merits of the respective claims of Howe and Singer.