At last, amid the trials of bitter poverty, he brings his invention to that stage in which he induces a friend to advance some money, by the promise of a share in the future patent, and thereby gains a temporary home for his family and a garret for his workshop. Day after day and night after night he labours, and finally, in April, 1845, the rather crude machine is completed, and two woollen suits of clothing are sewed thereon, one for a friend, and one for himself. Then came the effort to make more machines and place them on the market. People admired the machines as a curiosity, but none were induced to buy them or help him pecuniarily. Finally, in September, 1846, he obtained his patent, but by that time his best friends had become discouraged, and he was compelled to return with his family to his father’s house in Cambridge, Mass. To earn his bread he sought and found employment on a railway locomotive. By some means his brother sold one of his machines to Mr. William Thomas, a corset maker of London, and Howe was induced to go there to make stays, and his machines. He took his wife and children with him. The arrangement made with his employer was not such as to enable him to keep his family there, and he soon sent them home. Unable to sell his machines, he was soon reduced to want. He pawned his patent and his last machine, and procured money to return to New York, where he arrived penniless in 1849. He then learned that his wife was dying of consumption at Cambridge. He was compelled to wait until money could be sent him to pay his passage home, and reached there just before his wife’s death. He then learned that during his absence his patent and machine had attracted attention, that others had taken the matter up, added their improvements to his machines, and that many in various places were being made and sold which were infringements of his patent. A great demand for sewing machines had sprung up. He induced friends to again help him. Suits were commenced which, although bitterly fought for six years, were finally successful. Now fortune turned her smiling face upon him. Medals and diplomas, the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and millions of money became his. When the great civil war broke out in 1861, he entered the army as a private soldier, and advanced the money to pay the regiment to which he belonged, when the Government paymaster had been long delayed. His life was saddened by the fact that his wife had not lived to share his fortune. He died in Brooklyn, New York, October 3, 1867, in the midst of life, riches, and honour, at the comparatively early age of forty-eight.