The family was interested, too, in the inventiveness of the boys. Lorin had once invented an improvement on a hay-baling machine. Wilbur had designed and built a practical device for folding paper. This was while he had the contract for folding the entire weekly issue of an eight-page church paper. He had found the hand work tedious and got up a machine that could be worked by a foot-treadle. For a long time the mechanical ability that had aroused the most family admiration, though, was in the mother. Susan Koerner Wright was more than ordinarily resourceful in adapting household tools or utensils to unexpected uses. She was clever at designing clothes, too; and once she had built a sled for the two older boys. As her family used to say, she “could mend anything.” The mother, however, was not long to be spared to her family. On July 4, 1889, or less than four years after the return to Hawthorne Street, she died. During the latter years of her life, Wilbur was much with his mother, and devoted himself almost constantly to her care, for he too at that time was an invalid, unable to engage in much outdoor activity. Wilbur’s illness was in consequence of an accident. While playing a game of shinny, on skates, he was hit in the face with a shinny club. The blow knocked out all his upper front teeth. He began to suffer from a heart disorder from which he did not completely recover for several years. After the death of the mother, and the departure of the two older brothers to establish homes of their own, the other members of the Wright family were all the more drawn together. Whatever one of them was doing interested all. And all--especially Wilbur--did much reading. Two groups of books were in the home, one in Bishop Wright’s study upstairs, and another, used by the family, downstairs in the living room. Nearly all the books in the father’s library were “very serious,” but Wilbur often dipped into them, though the father made no effort to direct or control anyone’s reading. Downstairs, however, were the books that both Wilbur and Orville liked best. These included a set of Washington Irving’s works, both Grimm’s and Andersen’s fairy tales, Plutarch’s _Lives_, a set of the _Spectator_, a set of Addison’s essays, Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_, a set of Sir Walter Scott, Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, Green’s history of England, Guizot’s _France_, an incomplete set of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and a set in which was Marey’s _Animal Mechanism_. Here also were a set of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ and _Chambers’ Encyclopedia_. The _Britannica_ was an edition of the late 70’s and the _Chambers’ Encyclopedia_ was an earlier edition. Though Wilbur was the great reader, Orville was not far behind him. He was fascinated by scientific articles in the encyclopedia almost from the time he learned to read.