And so Roger was launched for the first time on the telling of his
dream. He was a little halting and incoherent at times, but his old
friend listened attentively. When Roger had finished, he said,
"It's a good dream, Roger, and sound in its general premises. Have you
ever got down to brass tacks with it and tried to design a solar
engine?"
"No, I've only a lot of notes and sketches. It always seemed to cost so
much that I never had courage to go any farther."
Erskine refilled his pipe. "I have a dream too. Only mine is in pretty
good working shape. My dream has been to turn out of this school men
who were practical engineers but who also had ideas. Men who were never
satisfied with a bridge, a motor, a gas engine after they had finished
it, but would be forever trying to improve it. Such men, of course, are
rare, but in the fifteen years I've been here, I've sent out five or six
lads who have given American engineering a real lift. I haven't come
across a fellow before though who had any concrete vision of the world's
labor problems in relation to the inventing game."
He fell to brooding and Roger waited patiently. Erskine finally looked
up. "It's a big dream, boy. Too big for you or any other man to put over
in a single generation. But we'll do what we can toward giving it a
start. You cut out junior laboratory and get to work on your designs.
When you finally get one that seems workable, we'll have the shops make
a model." He paused, then rose and Roger rose too while the Dean put a
hand on his broad young shoulder. "You've launched on the finest, most
thankless, most compelling, most discouraging, most heart thrilling game
in the world, Roger. You'll probably be poverty stricken all your life,
but Lord! Lord! what riches of the mind will be yours!"
Roger flushed and lifted his head in a gesture that was infinitely
young.
"I'm used to poverty, sir."
"I know you are and so am I. Good night, Roger!"
"Good night, Dean! Thank you!" and Roger, in spite of his grief,
returned to the Wolfs' with his face set triumphantly toward the
future.
The next morning he deposited his suitcase in old lady Winkler's most
meager and coldest bedroom and after he had stoked the furnace and
shoveled the walks he bolted for the college drafting room.
It was not until the fall of his senior year that Roger completed a
design of a solar engine which Dean Erskine was willing to turn over to
the University shops, that a model might be made. Roger had taken Ernest
into his confidence and that faithful friend undertook to make all
drawings for him. Ernest had no originality of mind, but he was an
excellent workman and a first class mathematician and laboratory man.
Early in January, the model was completed, and on a cold Saturday
afternoon, the test was made. Roger and Ernest came home to the Wolfs'
for supper deeply discouraged.
"But why wouldn't it work?" asked Elsa, as the boys wiped the supper
dishes for her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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