Van Wageners Ways
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Van Wagener is the quintessential enthussaistic inventor, whose bright ideas fall apart in comic ways. Tales told by "The Colonel" of his old friend, and of his calamirous progress. 1: Van Wagener's Eye 2: The Explosive Dog 3: A Scientific Balloon 4: The Flying Cat 5: A Tricycle Made for Two 6: A Flying March 7: Incandescent Cats 8: A Scientific Trap 9: The Volcanic Valve 10: The Fatal Fishing Line 11: The Professor's Jump 12: The Amphibious Torpedo 13: The Floating Magnet 14: Van Wagener's Clocks

VAN WAGENER'S WAYS

W. L. Alden

1898

Contents

1: Van Wagener's Eye

2: The Explosive Dog

3: A Scientific Balloon

4: The Flying Cat

5: A Tricycle Made for Two

6: A Flying March

7: Incandescent Cats

8: A Scientific Trap

9: The Volcanic Valve

10: The Fatal Fishing Line

11: The Professor's Jump

12: The Amphibious Torpedo

13: The Floating Magnet

14: Van Wagener's Clocks

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1: Professor's Van Wagener's Eye

"THERE is one thing," said the Colonel, as we were walking along the Strand one evening, "in which London is behind the age, and that is in the matter of electric lighting. Take my own town of New Berlinopolisville. It hasn't more than fifty thousand inhabitants, but there isn't a gas lamp in the whole place, except in a few houses. The streets and most of the houses are all lighted with electricity, and I shouldn't be surprised to find when I get home again, that our people were doing all their cooking and house-warming by electric heat. Why you Britishers still stick to gas as you do, is something that I can't account for.

"Did I ever tell you about old Professor Van Wagener and his electric inventions? Well, this looks like a respectable bar-room, and, if you say so, we'll step in and have a little something; and I'll tell you about the Professor. He was one of our most remarkable men, and though the general public doesn't know it, he did more for the cause of electricity than almost any man in America, except Edison.

"About two years ago," began the Colonel, as he sipped his hot Scotch, and tried in vain to tilt back on its imaginary hind-legs the sofa on which we were sitting, "Professor Van Wagener went crazy, as most folks thought, on the subject of electricity. Incandescent lamps were his particular style of lunacy, and he made up his mind that he wouldn't have any other sort of light in his house. You see his sight was beginning to get a little dim, which made him dissatisfied with gas; and then he had knocked over his kerosene lamp—  paraffin, I believe you call it over here, though I don't see what right you have to invent new names for things that we Americans have named— half a dozen times, and had come so near to setting the house on fire, that he was anxious to get rid of kerosene altogether. Then, again, he believed that electricity would be a good deal cheaper than gas, provided it was properly managed; and I'm inclined to think that he was right. Anyway, he told Mrs. Van Wagener that he was going to furnish the house with incandescent lights, and that she might sell her kerosene lamps and her gas fixtures for what they would bring.

"Now thishyer Professor was not only an ingenious man, but he was a practical man, which is something that a Professor very seldom is. He saw that it was all a mistake to have lights fixed in one place, as gas-burners are, or to have them carried about by hand like ordinary lamps or candles, and supplied it from a storage battery that was concealed under the girl's back hair. When there was no need for a light in the front hall it was left in darkness, but whenever anybody rang at the front door, the maid just turned up her light, and answered the bell. She was a rather pretty girl, and she made a fine effect with her lamp glowing on the top of her head, and lighting up her face in a way that would have made an ugly face pretty hard to bear. When she showed visitors into the parlour, she would walk in front of them, lighting the way; and everybody declared that she was a long way superior to the best hall light that had ever been previously known.

"Then the Professor fitted a light in the inside of his silk hat, and cut openings in the hat to let the light shine through. In front of the hat was a window of plain glass; on the right side was one of green glass; and on the left side one of red glass. You see, the Professor's idea was, that his lights would, show which way he was heading, when he went out on the street after dark. 'Any man who knows the rule of the road,' said he, 'will know by the colour of my lights which way I am heading, and can keep out of my way.' This was very convenient for the old gentleman, for, as I have said, his sight was rather dim, letting alone the fact that he had one glass eye; and this being the case, he often ran into people, and horses, and things, when he was out after dark. He made a good deal of a sensation the first time he appeared on our Broadway, with his head-light and his side-lights burning their brightest, and, as was natural, he had a pretty big crowd following him. The policemen were a little doubtful about the thing at the start, for a policeman always thinks that anything that is new must be unlawful. However, the Professor was so generally respected that even the policemen hesitated to club their ideas into his head.

"Professor Van Wagener had a daughter who was middling popular with the young men, although she did know an awful lot of mathematics and chemistry. Of course, her father fitted her, as he did everybody else in the house, with an electric head-light; but the girl wasn't very well pleased with it. When a young man came to, see her, she would turn herself on, and light him into the back parlour, where they would sit together and talk. But somehow the young men never seemed to make much progress after Miss Sallie was lighted by electricity. Whether it was that no fellow likes to have an electric light resting on his shoulder, or whether it was because there was no way of turning the light down till it would burn in a cosy subdued way, like gas when it is turned down by an intelligent girl, I can't say; but the result of the thing was that Sallie didn't get a single offer from the day her father lit her up with the incandescent light. At first she begged him to let her have a kerosene light, and when, he wouldn't do it she cried a good deal, and said that he wanted her to die an old maid. That's what would probably have happened if it hadn't been for the intelligence of a young man who came to see her before the winter was quite over, and brought a candle with him every time. Sallie would light the candle, and then turn herself off for the rest of the evening, and she gathered in that young man the very second time he called at the house.

"Professor Van Wagener had a cat that he considered to be an animal of considerable taste for science, and nothing would satisfy him till he had provided the cat with an electric head-light. He had considerable difficulty in fastening the light on the cat's head, for, although she had always seemed to take a good deal of interest in watching him experimenting with different sorts of things in his chemical laboratory, she drew the line at electricity and objected to being lighted up like the rest of the people in the house. However, the Professor wouldn't listen to her; and the first night that the lamp was in working order, he put the cat in the kitchen, and told her to lay for mice. They do say that the next morning, when the housemaid came downstairs, she found about five thousand mice lying on the kitchen floor, too frightened to think of running away. The cat was sitting up in the middle of the room, with her head-light blazing away, and she paying not the least attention to the mice, but just licking her chops, and saying to herself that after all there was considerable good in electricity. She never made the least attempt to catch the mice, considering that it wouldn't be sportsmanlike to take advantage of their condition. The girl, she just gave one big scream, and then she got out of that kitchen and fainted dead away on the hall-floor, breaking her head-light in her fall, and creating a good deal of excitement in the house. The Professor, came down and swept up the mice, and carried them out in a basket. They do say that there was pretty near a bushel of them, but I don't doubt that the thing was exaggerated. Anyhow, the house was completely cleared of mice; and whether the Professor drowned his basketful, or just let them loose somewhere in the street, I never knew. I suspect he let them loose, for that is what a scientific man would have been middling sure to do.

"There was one person in the Professor's family who didn't like the electric light business. That was Mrs. Van Wagener. She was a woman of a great deal of character, people said, and, of course, we all know that when a woman is said to have a great deal of character, what is meant is that she can make herself mighty disagreeable, and generally does it. Mrs. Van Wagener always disliked her husband's scientific habits. She used to say that some men were kept up late at night by whiskey, and some by science, but of the two she preferred the man who went in for whiskey. Mrs. Waterman, who lived next door to Mrs. Van Wagener, had a husband who drank considerable whiskey, and Mrs. Van Wagener used to say to her, 'My dear, don't you grieve! When Waterman gets drunk, you know where he is, but when my husband gets to work in his laboratory I never know from one minute to another whether he is alive, and all in one piece, or whether he has blown himself up, and is scattered all over the country in mornamillion bits.' You see, the Professor had blown himself up a number of times, which made his wife a little prejudiced against chemistry, though he had never done himself any very great harm, except when he lost his eye.

"Well, as I was saying, Mrs. Van Wagener was mightily opposed to the electric light, and nothing could induce her to wear one on her head. She compromised by wearing a light fastened to her waist-belt, but she complained that it was of very little use when she wanted to read or to sew. 'Gimme an old-fashioned kerosene lamp every time,' she used to say. 'Some day thishyer electricity will blow up and kill the whole of us.' By the way, did you ever notice that women always believe that electricity is liable to explode? I remember when we had electric bells put into our house in New Berlinopolisville, my aunt, who kept house for me, used to warn the servants never to bring a lighted candle anywhere near the wires for fear of setting the electricity on fire and blowing up the house. Say what you will for women, you can't honestly think that they have scientific minds.

"There was one thing that troubled the Professor. He had his electric light rigged up in the top of his hat, as I believe I told you. This was all right when he took his walks abroad, but it wasn't quite so convenient in the house. Every time the Professor wanted a light he hail either to call the maid, or his daughter, or his wife, or else he had to put on his hat. Now he had a fashion of reading in bed, and he found it mighty awkward to go to bed with his hat on, which was what he had to do if he wanted a light in road by. One day a happy thought struck him, and he told his wife that he had solved the problem of his head-light at last.

"A glass eye isn't of very much use, except for show, and this was a reflection that had always annoyed the Professor, ever since he began to wear a glass eye. He now saw his way to make that eye useful, and to give himself the most convenient light that a man ever had. His idea was to make a glass eye with an incandescent fibre in the middle of it, and to run it by a storage battery in his waistcoat pocket. So he went to work, and, being a very ingenious workman, as well as a man brimful of science, he turned out a glass eye that couldn't be distinguished from a natural one, so far as appearances went, and that had an electric light of six candle-power in the middle of it.

"It was the biggest success that the Professor had ever had. Wherever he went after dark, that eye was blazing away and lighting up the path. When he wanted to read, there was his light in just the handiest place it could possibly have been. The fine wires that ran from it down to his waistcoat pocket wore concealed under his hair, so that hardly anybody would notice them; and when he wanted to put his light out, or to turn it on, all he had to do was to put his finger and thumb into his pocket. Then again, the thing operated like a dark lanthorn, for whenever the Professor wanted to turn his light off in a hurry, and without fumbling for the button in his pocket, all he had to do was to shut his eye. The light would keep on burning behind the eyelid, but it wouldn't be bright enough to attract attention.

"The day the Professor got his new eye-light into working order, his wife wasn't at home, having gone out to spend the day and the evening. He lit himself up early in the evening, and, keeping in his room, he wasn't seen by anybody. When night came he went to bed early, so as to enjoy the luxury of reading in bed. He took the storage battery out of his pocket, and put it under the pillow; and when he had stretched himself out in bed, with a book in his hand and his eye blazing away with six candle-power, he was about the happiest man in all New Berlinopolisville. He read and read until he began to get sleepy, and then he put down his book, and thought over a lot of scientific things, till he accidentally fell asleep. I told you be could close the lid over the illuminated eye if he wanted to, but as a rule he didn't close that lid, but slept with it wide open. Mrs. Van Wagener came home in course of time, and naturally went up to her bedroom. She was a strong-minded woman, who was about as likely to steal a sheep as to faint away, but she admitted afterwards that when she entered the room and saw the Professor's eye blazing its level best, she came nearer dropping on the floor than she had ever done before. However, she pulled herself together, and woke the Professor up. She never said just how she did it, but it's my idea that he was waked up suddener than a man was ever waked before. She told him that this time he had gone too far; that his illuminated eye was simply blasphemous, and that she wouldn't stay in the same house, and much less in the same room, with it. 'It's bad enough for a man to sleep with a glass eye wide open,' says she, 'but when it comes to an illuminated eye, it is more than any Christian woman is called to bear.'

"The Professor was offered to turn his eye out at once, which he naturally did, being a small, as well as a peaceful, man; and he was told that he must never wear an illuminated eye again. This didn't suit him, for he was proud of his new eye, and then there is no denying that it was a very convenient thing. So he said that he really couldn't afford to give up one of the most important inventions of the age just because of a woman's whim, and he stuck to this view of the case all through the night. The next morning, Mrs. Van Wagener went home to her mother, and brought a suit for a divorce against the Professor on the ground of cruel and inhuman treatment. When the case came on to be tried, the Professor was compelled to show the practical working of his illuminated eye to the jury, and they found a verdict for the plaintiff without leaving their seats.

"The Professor didn't seem to care very much about this, for the only thing he did care much about was science, and now that he had his house to himself he had nobody to interrupt him in his experiments. But he never could go into the street with his eye lit up without causing a crowd to collect and follow him, and presently there was an injunction got out against him, forbidding him to wear his eye in public, on the ground that it constituted a nuisance, and led to breaches of the peace. The poor old gentleman got angry at this, and said he wouldn't go into the street either by day or night; and the consequence was that, not having any exercise, he took sick and died. Well, he was a mighty bright light of science, and it's my opinion that some one else will take up his scheme of illuminated servant girls, and the like, and make a fortune out of it, though I'm willing to admit that I don't believe that illuminated glass eyes will ever become popular."

***

2: The Explosive Dog

"DID EVER you hear of a dog that was liable to explode?" asked the Colonel. "I knew that kind of dog once," he continued, "and I'll tell you about him.

"I had shut up my own house, and was keeping bachelor's hall with Professor Van Wagener one summer while his wife was away on a visit to her mother. Whenever Van Wagener went in extensively for chemical experiments, Mrs. Van Wagener always went to stay with her mother. She used to say that she never knew from one minute to another when Van Wagener would blow himself up; and to sit in her room waiting for an explosion, and wondering whether there would be enough of her husband's remains left to satisfy the life insurance company that he was really dead, was more than a weak woman's nerves could bear.

"There was nobody in the house except the Professor and I, and his big St. Bernard dog. We used to get our own breakfast with a spirit lamp, and go to the nearest hotel for our dinner. Van Wagener was in his laboratory nearly all day, and as my room was in another part of the house I was not much disturbed by the small explosions that I heard now and then.

"One evening the Professor came into my room while I was smoking my after-dinner cigar, carrying a teacupful of a sort of thick bluish paste. He set it down on the table, and then, dropping into a chair, informed me that he had just succeeded in perfecting the greatest invention of the age.

" 'I have known you to do that at least thirty- four times,' said I. 'What sort of an invention is it this time?'

" 'I have invented,' said Van Wagener solemnly, 'the most powerful explosive in the world. As compared with nitro-glycerine it will explode with at least two hundred times greater violence. You see that teacup. It holds just about an ounce of my explosive. Well, sir, if that was to explode at this minute there wouldn't be a piece of this house left large enough to submit to chemical analysis.'

" 'And you calmly bring the diabolical thing into my room and put it on my table!' said I. 'Van Wagener, I must bid you good evening. I've an engagement down town, and I shall probably have to go to Chicago to-night.' I meant what I said, for I hadn't the least confidence in Van Wagener's inventions, and I was expecting that his teacupful of the new explosive would get its work in before I could escape from the house.

" 'That's all nonsense!' said the Professor. 'My explosive is absolutely safe. set fire to it, or you can pound it with a hammer, and you can't make it explode. The only thing you have to be careful about is not to bring it into contact with any animal fat. Drop the smallest particle of lard, or butter, or anything of that sort into that teacup, and you'll see the most tremendous explosion that has taken place since Krakatoa blew up.'

"I didn't make any reply, but I just took that teacup and its contents and carried it out to the extreme end of the backyard, and set it down under a gooseberry bush, saying my prayers meanwhile. Then I came back to the house and told Van Wagener that if he didn't manage to get rid of it the first thing next morning, I would not only leave him, but would have him arrested as a dangerous lunatic. I will say this for him, that he was the sweetest tempered  man in the world. He only laughed at me, and promising to dispose of the explosive in some safe way, proposed that we should walk down to the post office, so that he could post a letter to his wife.

"We were gone about an hour, and when we returned I went with Van Wagener into the back yard to see him bury his explosive where it would be perfectly safe, and where he could dig it up after Mrs. Van Wagener had returned, and I was out of the house. We took a tin can and a spade with us, but when we came to the gooseberry bush we were knocked all in a heap, as you might say, to find that the teacup was empty, and as clean as if it had been washed in hot water. Van Wagener couldn't understand it, but he was inclined to think that some rival scientific man had got wind of his invention, and had stolen the explosive in order to analyse it. I didn't take any stock in this theory, for I knew that if any one had stolen the explosive he would have stolen the cup as well. Even a first-class scientific man would have sense enough to do that, so I made up my mind that no man had stolen the thing.

" 'Has your— your explosive any taste?' I asked.

" 'It tastes very much like warm ice cream,' said Van Wagener, though where he ever saw  any warm ice cream he didn't condescend to explain.

" 'I suppose you mean that it is soft and sweet?' said I.

" 'Exactly,' he replied. I think you'd rather like the taste of it, and it wouldn't do you any harm to eat it— that is, if you didn't eat any fatty substance at the same time.'

" 'Then I can tell you what has become of it,' said I. 'That idiot of a dog of yours has eaten it up. I'll run over to my house for a gun, and we'll shoot him at once, before he explodes.'

" 'You won't do anything of the kind,' said Van Wagener. 'Why, my wife thinks almost as much of that dog as she does of me, and I'd as soon commit murder as kill him.'

"There wasn't anything more to be said, and the Professor and I turned back towards the house. There on the front step was sitting that infamous dog, licking his chaps and wagging his tail with the general air of having earned a good dinner by hard and honest labour.

"Van Wagener stopped suddenly, and said:  'Come to think of it, there is a possibility that the dog may explode. If he were to get hold of a bit of butter, or a greasy bone, before he digests the explosive, he might manage to blow himself and all the rest of us into the next county.'

" 'If you won't kill him,' said I, 'at least chain him up as far from the house as possible.'

" 'You may chain him up if you can,' said the Professor, but he doesn't like me, and will never let me touch him.'

" 'No, thank you!' said I. 'You don't catch me meddling with an explosive dog. I prefer one with the hydrophobia. Let's get into the house and lock the brute out, and hope that the stuff will poison him before morning.'

"It was very easy to propose to get into the house, but the dog didn't see it in that light. There he sat on the step, and we didn't dare to go near him, for Van Wagener kept remembering that he had seen the beast licking a greasy plate some time in the afternoon, and even while we were talking about him he began to lick his paws, to which it was very likely that something of a fatty nature had adhered. So we sat down to wait till the dog should get good and ready to come down off of the front step, and permit us to go into the house.

"We waited for at least an hour, and that dog made himself comfortable on the door-mat, and never paid the slightest attention to our wishes. About eight o'clock, however, the idea seemed to strike him that perhaps he had not been quite as sociable as he ought to have been, and that possibly he might have hurt our feelings. So all of a sudden he got up, and came running over to us to make his apologies. We didn't stop to listen to him, but seized the opportunity to make a run for the house, telling the dog to 'get out, you brute!' in a tone that would have convinced any sensible beast that we didn't wish for his society. But he was a forgiving animal, and affecting to regard our manner towards him as a mere joke, he trotted after us, and squeezed by us into the house. I didn't care to kick him, for I wasn't by any means sure that the Professor's new explosive couldn't be exploded by concussion; and as for the Professor himself, he knew that the dog would pay no more attention to his requests than would Mrs. Van Wagener herself. We managed to get upstairs and into my room a yard or two ahead of the dog, but no sooner had we shut the door and bolted it than he sat down, began to paw the panels, and whined for us to let him in.

" 'How long will he stay there?' said I.

" 'Probably all night,' said Van Wagener; 'that is, if the explosion doesn't take place in the meantime.'

" 'We've got to get him downstairs and outside of the house,' said I. 'He's your dog and you ought to brace up, and make him mind. Try him with one of those biscuits that are there on my table. Walk in front of him and show him the biscuit, and the chances are that he will follow you downstairs, especially if he thinks that you prefer to have him stay here. If that plan don't work we must just let ourselves down out of the window by tying the sheets together. It would be bad enough to be blown up by an Anarchist, but to be blown up by a fool of a dog would be simply disgraceful.'

"Van Wagener said he would try the biscuit game, but that he hardly thought it would be a success. It wasn't. No sooner had he opened the door with a biscuit in his hand than the dog snatched it away from him, and then, being full of gratitude for what he supposed was an act of kindness, he jumped on the Professor, knocked him down, and sprang over his body into the room.

"Van Wagener picked himself up, remarking that he hoped there was nothing of a greasy nature about that biscuit, but he rather thought that it felt as if it had been slightly in contact with butter. Then he came over to the corner of the room where I was crouching behind the sofa, and said he was most sincerely sorry for the annoyance he had inadvertently caused me.

"The dog meandered around the room in a most genial frame of mind, upsetting small objects with his tail, and now and then barking in a cheerful and friendly way. Presently he caught sight of Van Wagener and myself squeezed together in the corner, and he came and sat down in front of us with his tongue hanging out, and an expression of imbecile goodness in his face that was simply sickening.

" 'We must get out of this house at once,' said I. 'If that brute explodes here we won't have the ghost of a chance, but an explosion in the open air might not kill more than one of us. Come along, Professor! Perhaps we can manage to set the dog on a stray cat, and slink away from him while his mind is occupied.'

"So we went downstairs again, and out of the house. The dog kept close to us, running around us in a circle, and trying now and then to jump up and put his paws on our shoulders. Nothing I could say could hurt his feelings and depress his spirits. When we came to a street lamp I took a newspaper out of my pocket, and read out loud part of a speech made by an Irish Congressman, showing the ease with which the American-Irish could send two hundred thousand men to England and exterminate the entire English population. The speech would have sickened any ordinary dog, but that dog of Van Wagener's never turned a hair. I even made Van Wagener sing a verse of a funeral hymn, but it had no sort of effect.

"We walked about a mile away from the house, but we didn't meet a cat, or anything else that might have distracted the dog's attention. So at last we gave up all hope, and sat down by the side of the road to rest, and wait for the worst. The dog sat down close beside us, and tried to lick my face. He was the most infernally affectionate brute that I ever saw.

"We had been sitting there about ten minutes when I saw the light of a bicycle coming down the road. Now if there was one thing that the dog hated more than another it was a bicycle, and he had got Van Wagener into no end of rows by chasing every bicycle that passed the front gate. I called the dog's attention to the approaching machine, and when it was close to us, I remarked, 'sick it!' in a low tone. For the first time in his life that infamous dog looked at the bicycle in silence, and never moved a muscle. However, the man on the bicycle made up for the dog's want of interest. He had heard me say 'sick it' to the dog, and he informed Van Wagener and me that we were a couple of murderous tramps, who had tried to set a dog on him; and that he should recognise us the next time he saw us, and have us arrested for trying to upset his machine in order to rob him.

"By this time it was getting pretty late, and I was getting tired and reckless. I told the Professor that I was going to my own house to get my gun, and that I would shoot that dog, no matter what he or any one else might say. Van Wagener made no objection. He was a sensible man in some few things, and he recognised the fact that our only chance of saving ourselves and New Berlinopolisville from an explosion was to kill the dog.

"We walked rapidly back towards Van Wagener's place, which we had to pass in order to reach my own house. The dog trotted along with us, keeping close to my legs, and trying to rub his nose against my hand. It did seem a little cowardly to kill an animal that was so full of affection and confidence in me, but it wasn't the time to lavish sentiment on an explosive dog. Besides, other people's lives were at stake as well as mine and the Professor's; for if the dog should explode within range of the nearest houses, they would be wrecked, and their inmates would perish in the ruins. But when I got to my house a new difficulty turned up. I had left the key of my door in my room at Van Wagener's house, and in order to get my gun, I must first get my key. So I gave up the idea of shooting the dog, and being pretty angry with myself, and all the rest of the world, I told Van Wagener that I should go to my room and go to bed, and that if he survived the explosion, and I didn't, he should put on my tombstone an inscription, saying that my life had been fooled away by a stupid dog and a mad scientific person. Van Wagener said that of course he would be happy to comply with any wish that I might express, and we opened his front gate and went in without any further words.

"We had hardly entered the front yard, and had not yet shut the gate, when a big black cat rushed out past us, and bolted down the road with the dog in hot chase of her. Hope sprang up once more in the bosoms of the Professor and myself. We made haste to shut the gate and to get into the house. Thanks to that cat there was a chance that our lives would be spared! The dog was safely outside of the yard, and the fence was so high that we new he could not jump over it. At the worst he couldn't explode within thirty yards of our front door, and proud as the Professor was of his new explosive, he admitted that an explosion at that distance would not be absolutely certain to destroy the house. My own hope was that the dog would chase the cat for a mile or two, and then blow up at a safe distance from any house or person. It was what he owed to us after his idiotic conduct that night, but of course I couldn't feel any real confidence that he would do his duty.

"I sat down in my room to smoke another cigar and calm my nerves a little, and Van Wagener sat down with me, and made no end of apologies for his dog's aggravating conduct. I let him talk on for awhile, and was on the point of telling him I wasn't in the least alarmed, and didn't believe his new explosive would explode at all, when there took place the most tremendous explosion that I had ever heard— and I had heard a good many tidy explosions in my time; having once been blown up in a powder-mill; and having been quite near to Butler's powder-ship when it blew up opposite to Fort Wilmington. This explosion was like three powder-mills and half-a-dozen tropical thunderstorms rolled into one. It broke every pane of glass in the house, and made the whole building rock as if an earthquake had shaken it.

"The Professor's face was just beaming with delight. 'That's the dog at last!' said he. 'I do hope nobody has been killed; but you must admit that an ounce of my explosive is the only one in the world that could possibly have made such a tremendous noise.'

" 'We'll go out and see what damage has been done,' said I. 'If you'll listen to me, Van Wagener, you'll not say a word to any one about your explosive. There won't be dog enough left to be identified as yours, and if you keep quiet no one will suspect that you have had anything to do with the explosion.'

"We opened the front gate to go out, and nearly fell over the dog, who was sitting there waiting to be let in, and looking as innocent as if no explosion had ever taken place.

" 'I see it all now,' said Van Wagener. 'That poor dog never touched the explosive. It was a stray cat that ate it, and has paid the penalty, and we have been suspecting the dog wrongfully all night.'

"That was just what had happened. That dog was as innocent as a child unhung. He was no more liable to explode than a frozen Esquimaux, and yet Van Wagener and I had been living for the last eight hours in mortal terror of him. I didn't know whether to apologise to the animal or to kick him; I did know, however, that I should have liked to kick myself, if it had been feasible.

"That explosion made a great deal of talk in New Berlinopolisville. It didn't do any harm, for when the cat exploded she was at least a mile from any building, and she merely made a hole in the ground about as big and as deep as the cellar of a house. The police made an investigation, and decided that the explosion was the work of Anarchists, and that in all probability the wretches had themselves fallen victims to their own dynamite. Well, I don't know that they weren't right, for as a general rule a cat is about as thoroughgoing an Anarchist as can be found, with the single exception that a cat washes herself."

***

3: A Scientific Balloon

"YOU'RE quite right, sir," remarked the Colonel in reply to young Thompson's question, "I have been in some pretty tight places in the course of my life. A man can't fool along through fifty or sixty years of active life without finding himself occasionally in middling tight places. But wherever I am, so long as I am on solid ground, I generally calculate to be able to work myself out of almost any difficulty. It's when you put me aboard a ship, or in a balloon, that I begin to lose my grip. Speaking of balloons, I'll tell you right here, if you don't mind, of a little adventure I had— the only time that I ever was fool enough to trust myself in a balloon.

"One day there came to my house in New Berlinopolisville a fellow with a letter of introduction from Sam Kendall, who used to be ring-master of the 'Hail! Columbia' circus at the time when I was the manager and proprietor of the concern. Sam was one of the best of fellows, and consequently any friend of his was welcome at my house. Professor Montgomery, which was the name of Sam's friend, was a small, determined- looking chap that at first sight I would have taken for a light-weight fighting man, but, as it appeared, he was a balloonist. It's a singular thing that every man who goes up in a balloon professionally calls himself a Professor, while a miner who goes down a shaft professionally never thinks of giving himself any such title. Sam's letter didn't say that Professor Montgomery was a balloonist, and I supposed he was a regular college Professor who had caught the look of a fighting man through teaching football and other athletic games to the students. So when he accepted my invitation to dinner, I just sent over for my old friend Professor Van Wagener, the great electric sharp, to come and join us, thinking that the two Professors would be good company for one another.

"Now it happened that Van Wagener, who was always interested in everything that was scientific and useless, was mightily interested in ballooning, and instead of being disappointed when he found out that Montgomery was an ignorant chap, who couldn't speak ten words of good grammar, he was just delighted to find that the man was a practical balloonist. The two got to work and talked balloon till you couldn't rest. Van Wagener said that it was his belief that a balloon properly constructed ought to be able to stay in the air for a month or a year at a time, and when Montgomery said that the thing wasn't possible, Van Wagener wanted him to explain why.

"It's plain enough," says the balloonist. "When your balloon rises and gets into thinner air the gas expands and escapes through the mouth of the bag. Even if it didn't escape it would always leak out through the silk or cotton, or whatever stuff the bag is made of. That's the reason why you can't stay up only a few hours. No man ain't never been able to invent a balloon that won't lose gas, and nobody never will invent one, for it can't be done.'

" 'If I make a balloon that can't possibly leak a single cubic inch of gas will you make an ascension with me, and attend to the practical management of the machine?' says Van Wagener.

" 'You can just bet I will,' says the other chap. '.Why, man, there'd be an everlasting fortune in such a balloon. But what's the use of talking about it? The thing can't be done, as you'll find out when you set down to invent your gas-tight balloon.'

"Well, upshot of it was that Yan Wagener set to work and made a balloon that even I could see was going to meet his requirement. The main balloon was a big globe of aluminium, and on the top of that was a bag of thick rubber connected with the globe by an automatic valve. The idea was that the globe would hold just enough gas to float the balloon at a height of two hundred feet above the earth. Now, being at that height, if the balloonist wanted to rise, all he had to do was to light a big spirit lamp that would heat the gas in the globe and make it expand. When it had expanded to a certain point it would flow over into the rubber bag, and the lifting capacity of the machine would be increased about one third. Of course the balloon would rise, and when the balloonist wanted to descend again, all he would have to do, according to Van Wagener, would be to put out his lamp and let the globe cool off. It was a mighty ingenious contrivance, and Montgomery, who began by having no sort of confidence in Van Wagener, ended by thinking that perhaps he had really invented a balloon that could be made to stay up for ever. Nothing would satisfy Van Wagener but that I should go along on the trial trip of the balloon. I wasn't in the least anxious to do it, for solid ground was always good enough for me; but Van Wagener, being an old friend, and liable, like all scientific chaps, to get himself into difficulties when he didn't have some practical man to look after him, I finally agreed to go. The ascension was to be made from my back-yard, where we would be out of sight of Mrs. Van Wagener and the general public. The machine was carted over to my house after dark, and the next morning, when we were ready to start, no one knew anything of our intention except my coloured man, and he knew how to hold his tongue.

"I was surprised to find that Van Wagener had calculated the lifting power of the balloon so closely that he knew to an ounce just what weight she must carry in order to float, as he meant her to, a couple of hundred feet above the earth, and stay right there. Consequently all three of us had to be weighed, and we were a good two hours in reducing the weight of things in our pockets, or of increasing our weight with bits of gravel, until at last Van Wagener was satisfied that the whole weight of the machine, with us and our instruments and traps in it, would be exactly what he calculated that it ought to be. Then came the filling of the globe with pure hydrogen made on the spot, and consequently it was five o'clock in the afternoon before everything was ready and we made our start. The balloon rose slow and gentle, and when it was up to about the height of the steeple of the ltoman Catholic church it gradually ceased rising and hung here perfectly quiet. There wasn't a breath of air stirring, so the thing had no sort of drift, and promised to stay just where she was until the wind should rise. The Professor was mightily pleased, and to my mind Montgomery ought to have been satisfied that the invention was all right, but he seemed a little uneasy, so I asked him what fault he had to find with the balloon.

" 'We're all right so far,' says he, 'but the difficulty is going to be in keeping our weight just up to the standard and no more. I'll have more confidence in thishyer thing when the trial trip is over, and nobody killed. There's one thing that I don't exactly see, and that is how we are going to descend.'

" 'I declare I forgot to provide for that,' says Van Wagener. 'However it will be time enough to think of that when we get through ascending.'

"He was as delighted as a child, and about as capable of looking into the future. With that he lights his spirit lamp, and presently the balloon begins to rise, just as he said it would.

" 'What do you say to that?' says Van Wagener to Montgomery.

" 'That's all right,' says Montgomery; 'she'll rise fast enough, but she ain't going to rise no more this afternoon,' and he blows out the spirit lamp.

"Van Wagener was pretty mad, and demanded to know what Montgomery meant by putting out the lamp.

"Van Wagener and I both looked over the side, and we could see that we were about twice as high in the air as we had been. Just then the machine took a fresh start, and we could feel her going up at a pretty good pace.

" 'What's the matter now?' says I.

" 'Matter enough,' says Van Wagener, 'I've dropped my false teeth overboard.'

" 'More weight gone,' says Montgomery. ' Now we'll go up till the balloon busts. If I'd known that you had false teeth I'd never have trusted myself here with you. I might have known that you would have been heaving of 'em overboard the first chance you could get. I never see a scientific man yet that was fit to be trusted.'

" 'Do you really mean,' said I, 'that this balloon is bound to keep on going up.'

" 'We've only one chance,' says Montgomery. 'If there's a heavy fall of dew tonight it may weigh us down enough to make up for the Professor's teeth and the spirit he's been burning. It's our only chance.'

"I knew then that I was in a pretty tight place, and I'd have given considerable if I'd never agreed to go along with Van Wagener. However there was nothing to be done except to wait for the dew, and so we all sat down in the car and waited.

"Luckily there was a heavy dew. Montgomery made us take off our coats and hang them over the side so that they could catch all the dew there was, and about eight o'clock we found, by throwing over a bit of tissue paper, that we were gradually sinking. We kept on sinking most of the night, as I judge, and when the morning came we found we were about six hundred feet above the earth, and that we had drifted out of sight of New Berlinopolisville.

"Van Wagener was in high spirits, and began wringing out his coat and putting it on again. All of a sudden he sings out something which I didn't quite understand, not being familiar with scientific terms, and at the same time the balloon began to mount up again.

" 'What has that blasted scientific idjot dropped overboard now?' yells Montgomery.

" 'I happened to drop my purse out of my coat pocket,' says Van Wagener; 'but that is no excuse for your objectionable language.'

" 'I knew it,' says Montgomery. 'Now we are done for; the sun will be out presently, and then the gas will expand. Colonel, I'm sorry you're in this scrape, but I'm glad you're not a family man.'

"It did look middling scary. We sailed slowly upwards till the sun had warmed up the aluminium globe, and then we travelled straight up at a pace that couldn't fail to bring us up to twenty or thirty thousand feet before noon. There was only one way of making the balloon descend, and that was by letting out the gas. There being, however, no escape valve, we couldn't let out gas, and it didn't seem as if there was any possible way for us to escape. I will say this for Montgomery and the Professor, that they both showed that they were brave men. Montgomery cussed Van Wagener and science generally, but that was natural under the circumstances. Van Wagener sat quietly on the bottom of the car watching the barometer and making entries in his notebook, which je said would be of immense value to science in case they should be found. Neither of the men flinched a particle, though they knew that in all probability they would in course of time have a clean fall of say forty thousand feet. Of the two I was more sorry for Montgomery than for the Professor, for he didn't have the love of science to sustain him which the Professor had.

"We went up and up. The gas expanded with the heat of the sun and flowed over into the rubber bag, as Van Wagener had meant it should, and when this happened we about doubled our pace. We lost sight of the earth by nine o'clock in the morning, and by eleven o'clock the air had grown so thin that we began to have difficulty in breathing. Professor Van Wagener, whose lungs were weak, suffered worse than the rest of us, but he kept right on making his scientific notes, and to all appearance was enjoying himself as much as he had ever done in his life. Montgomery sat quiet, having grown tired of cussin' the Professor, and not having anything else to occupy his mind. I turned around to look over the side when the hilt of my revolver, which was in my hip pocket,  caught in the wicker work of the car and gave me an idea.

" 'See here, Montgomery,' I said, 'I can let the gas out of this balloon, but we'll have to take the risk of it's escaping so fast that we shall land in almost as much of a hurry as we will when the thing bursts.'

" 'I'll take the chances,' says Montgomery. 'If you let out the gas we shall have a chance, even if it is a slim one ; but if you don't let it out we're as dead as Julius Caesar.'

" 'What do you say, Professor?' said I, for I didn't want to act rashly.

" 'Certainly!' says the Professor. 'By all means try your experiment, Colonel, though I should prefer that you should wait till we reach an elevation of twenty-seven thousand feet, which will be greater than anyone else has ever attained.'

" 'We're high enough,' says Montgomery. 'I ain't pining to get among the angels just yet. Terry finny is good enough for me.'

"I All right,' says I, and I drew my revolver and fired at the aluminium globe. Of course the bullet went through it as if it was paper, making one hole where it went in and another where it came out. This gave the gas the choice of two ways of escaping, and it took them both.

"In the course of the next five minutes the balloon began to sink, and I had hopes that we might reach land safely. But Montgomery knew better. The balloon kept sinking faster and faster as more and more gas escaped, and in a little while we were dropping down almost as fast as we would have done had the balloon burst. The earth wasn't long in coming in sight, and the trees and fields and houses seemed to be rushing up to meet us.

"There was a good breeze blowing when we were, as Montgomery judged, about a mile high, and it drifted us westward towards a good-sized lake.

" 'If we can only stay up till we're over that lake we shall be all right,' said Montgomery. 'Colonel, just heave overboard everything there is in this car.'

"With that he seized whatever he could lay his hands on, and I did the same, and for a minute or two it just rained instruments and things over that section of the country.

"Off with your boots, coats, waistcoats and hats,' yells Montgomery. 'Professor, if you've got any more portable teeth heave 'em over. We must get rid of every ounce of weight if we want to reach that lake.'

"Well we reduced our clothing down to a pretty low point, and Van Wagener went so far as to throw over his glass eye, he having no more teeth ready for discharging. Then we sat down and waited to see what the end would be.

"We were perhaps a quarter of a mile high when we came over the lake, and the moment we got where the water looked as if it might be fairly deep, Montgomery caught the Professor in his arms and threw him over without waiting to ask him if he was ready to go. Then Montgomery yelled to me to jump, and we all three left that balloon so suddenly that we all struck the water at pretty near the same time.

"I went down to the bottom, which was, as I judged, about fifty miles from the surface, though I afterwards heard that the lake was nowhere over forty feet deep. When I came up, Montgomery and the Professor were already swimming for land, and I followed their example. All the people of the neighbourhood had seen the balloon, and there was already a crowd of men, women and children on the shore waiting for us to land.

" 'This is exceedingly awkward,' says the Professor. I really can't face those people with only one eye and no teeth. Colonel, there's the balloon floating out there ; I think we had better swim back to her and wait for an opportunity to land after dark.'

" 'I'm going ashore,' said Montgomery, 'and I'd go if I hadn't a limb left, and every female boarding-school in Illinois was standing on the shore.' However the Professor's general appearance was so ghastly that most of the women and children didn't care to wait for us.

"We came quietly ashore, and a farmer rigged us out with dry clothes that fitted about as badly as a French soldier's uniform, and then drove us twenty-two miles to Hew Berlinopolisville.

"The Professor seemed as happy as a young man coming back from a picnic with his best girl. He kept on talking about the tremendous success of his balloon, and what a fortune there would be in it when he should have invented some way of getting it down from the clouds at a reasonable pace. But Montgomery was mad all the way through. He wouldn't open his mouth till we got to our door, and then he turned on the Professor and told him that sooner than go up in a balloon that a scientific man had invented he would take and fill his pockets with dynamite and then get a Hew York policeman to club him. Then he said good-night to me, and went off down the street, swearing to himself in a way that was really unfit for publication. I never saw or heard of the man again."

***

4: The Flying Cat

"SPARROWS," said the Colonel, "may be very upright, respectable, middle-class birds long as they slay in England, but when they emigrate to America, they are no better than the average of our working classes. Some meddling idiot brought a lot of sparrows to the States ten or fifteen years ago, expecting they would kill all the worms on the fruit trees. They hadn't been in the country above six months when they took the ground that they were as good as the best of our swell birds, and that they considered that killing worms was a degrading kind of labour fit only for blackbirds and crows. So they took to living on wheat, and strawberries, and cherries, and they multiplied so fast that they are the worst curse that the farmer and the fruit grower ever had, with the solitary exception of the McKinley tariff. That shows the folly of promoting emigration among birds, just as the exportation of rabbits to Australia showed the folly of supposing that man knows more about the proper distribution of animals than Nature knows. There are now about ten sparrows to every worm in the United Stales, and what we need more than anything else is some style of worm big enough to eat the sparrows.

"Professor Van Wagener and I were discussing the sparrow question one day, and I was complaining of the inefficiency of the American cat. Our cats are about as wide-awake as any monarchical cats that you can produce, but they can't catch a single sparrow. I've known ambitious cats who set out to catch sparrows, and who wasted away to mere skeletons, and died of weakness, through watching for sparrows from dawn to darkness, and never once getting within ten feet of one. As a general rule I don't have much sympathy with cats, but the insulting language that sparrows use when they see a cat laying for them, and the aggravating way in which they will fly just over the cat's head, or maybe hit the cat over the tail with their wings, is more than any cat can be expected to bear.

" 'The trouble is,' said Van Wagener, 'that the cat isn't a flying animal and the sparrow is. The sparrow's native element is the air, and you can't expect a cat to catch a sparrow so long as the cat can't fly.'

" 'That's true enough,' said I, 'but it don't help us out of our difficulty. Cats weren't made with wings, and neither you nor I can invent a new model of cat that will he able to fly, and to catch sparrows on the wing.'

" 'Don't you be too sure of that,' said the Professor. 'Science has improved everything that it has put its hand to, and I sec no reason why science shouldn't improve cats. A flying cat would supply a great public want, for she would kill off the sparrows as easily as she kills off the mice. I've half a mind to try the experiment of inventing a flying cat.'

" 'All right," said I, 'When you get your flying cat finished just notify me and I'll come and see her fly. Then, if you are going in for improving animals, perhaps you will invent a cat that can sing like a nightingale. The present style of singing among cats is disgraceful. They haven't any more idea of music than a Chinaman.'

" 'You only show your ignorance, Colonel,' said Van Wagener, 'when you ridicule science. Give me six weeks, and I promise to show you a flying cat. I don't say positively that the flying cat will exterminate all the sparrows, for that would be a pretty large order; but I do say that she will fly, and that she will give the sparrows the worst scare that they have ever had.'

"Well, the Professor buckled down to business, and from his daily interviews with his private cat, and the consequent scratches that diversified his good old scientific countenance, I judged that he was doing his best to make a cat that would fly. Before the six weeks were up he sent me a note, inviting me to come round to his house at two o'clock the next afternoon to see the first successful flying cat that had ever been invented. I needn't say that I went. I had assisted at the birth of dozens of Van Wagener's inventions, and I had generally found that the presence of a man with experience in the treatment of accidents was a handy thing, so far as the Professor was concerned.

"I found Van Wagener sitting in his library with the most discouraged-looking cat that I had ever seen. As soon as he had shaken hands with me he launched out into a description of his new invention.

" 'You know. Colonel,' said he, 'my method as an inventor. I ask myself what is needed for some particular purpose, and then I proceed to supply that need. Most people think that an inventor has ideas come to him all of a sudden, in a supernatural sort of way; but that is all nonsense. Inventing is a business, like any other, and any intelligent man can learn it. Now, when I saw that the reason why cats don't catch sparrows is that they can't fly after the bird, I saw that what was wanted was a flying cat, and I proceeded to invent one. Here I have a small balloon. This I fix to that cat of mine, and when it is inflated it will just support the weight of the cat in the air. Then you see this pair of paddle-wheels. They are to be fixed, one on each side of the cat, and are to be driven by a small electrical engine. The balloon floats the cat, and the paddle-wheels propel her. In order to steer the cat I fix a flat piece of tin to the extremity of her tail. When she sees a sparrow her instinct will make her swish her tail from one side to the other, and her attention being fastened on catching the bird, she will unconsciously work her tail in such a way as to steer her directly towards it Take it all in all I am justly proud of this invention. It is simple and effective, that is to say when the air is still, for of course my paddle-wheels will not propel the cat against the wind. I tried at first to tit the cat out with wings, but it was impossible to teach her to use them. Next to a woman a cat cares less for science than any other animal, and it is impossible to teach her to take an interest in an invention that is designed solely to benefit her. However, the day will come when flying cats will be as common as the ordinary type, and when they once get used to flying they will take to the sport as kindly as they now take to catching mice. Now, Colonel, if you are ready, we will rig up the cat for flying, and we will see what effect she produces on the sparrows in my backyard,'

"It wasn't an easy job to rig up Van Wagener's cat. She kicked and swore her level best, and got in several good scratches on the Professor's hands. However, he stuck to his task, and after a while the cat was ready, and we adjourned to the backyard. There was a whole gang of sparrows in the middle of the yard, forming a sort of ring round two that were fighting, and from the way in which every sparrow was talking at the top of his voice it was clear that some heavy betting on the fight was in progress. When they saw Van Wagener and his cat, they naturally flew up to the eaves of the house, where the fight was resumed. Van Wagoner took his flying cat to the extremity of the yard, and after showing her the sparrows on the top of the house, and exhorting her to gather them in, he launched her into the air.

"The cat rose slowly, kicking and yelling, until she was just about level with the eaves. The sparrows were so occupied with the fight that they paid no attention to her, and when she saw that there were at least twenty of them gathered close together, her desire to get at them made her temporarily forget her balloon and her paddle-wheels. She lashed her tail, as cats will do when bent on murder, and, just as the Professor predicted, the effect was to steer her in the direction of the sparrows. Her paddle-wheels were working smoothly and regularly, and though they were not large enough to give her any great speed, they steadily carried her across the yard towards the sparrows. Van Wagener was in ecstacies. He challenged me to point out any defect in his flying cat, and when I candidly admitted that it did seem to be a complete success, he was the happiest man in New Berlinopolisville. The cat came through the air so slowly and noiselessly that she was within two yards of the sparrows before they saw her. When they did catch sight of this new and startling animal, they were the worst frightened lot of birds that were ever seen outside of one of those so-called Happy Families, where half-a-dozen birds, clean paralysed with fear, are shut in a cage with a cat that has been filled up with chloral, and the public is asked to regard the exhibition as a specimen of what will he the usual sort of thing when the millennium gets its work fairly in. Those sparrows left in a tremendous hurry. They had a sudden business call in some distant part of Illinois, and I don't believe a single one of them stopped flying until they had put at least thirty miles between themselves and Van Wagener's flying cat.

" 'Now, you see,' said the Professor, 'how completely successful my invention is. My flying cat will either catch the sparrows and kill them, or she will frighten them out of the country. In either case the great sparrow problem is solved. It makes no difference to me, as a patriotic American citizen, whether all the British sparrows in the country are killed, of whether they are driven over into Canada. Come to think of it, I should prefer the latter result, for the driving of monarchical European birds out of our beloved country will be an object lesson in the enforcement of the Monroe doctrine, which will be of immense benefit to the nation.'

"The Professor, being a scientific crank, was naturally a political crank also, and he was more than two-thirds mad on the subject of the Monroe doctrine, which by-the-bye is unanimously believed in and worshipped by every lunatic in the States. When the Professor once got fairly started on the subject of the Monroe doctrine he forgot everything else, and he had clean forgotten his flying cat when Mrs. Van Wagener leaned out of a second story window, and advised him, in case he was going to make a political speech, to hire a hall. She was a mighty sarcastic woman, and her contempt for her husband's political views was even greater than her contempt for his scientific achievements. She was on the point of continuing her remarks about the Professor's political oration, when she suddenly gave the awfullest screech that I ever heard from female lips, though I was once in a room full of strong-minded women when a mouse ran across the floor. Mrs. Van Wagener thought that her last hour had come, judging from her screams, but, as I had a full view of what was taking place, I knew it was only the cat who had come. Having missed the sparrows the cat turned partly round to see what had become of them, and just then Mrs. Van Wagener, having unconsciously put her head within the animal's reach, the cat judged that her opportunity for miking a landing had arrived, and accordingly she lit on the top of Mrs. Van Wagener's head.

"Most any woman, not knowing that her husband had invented a flying cat, would have supposed when some monster with sharp claws, and a talent for using bad language, came flying through the air and lit on her head, that nothing less than the sea-serpent, or the flying dragons mentioned in Scripture, had attacked her. What with the cat's desire to kick herself free from her flying apparatus, and her anxiety to get square with the human race, she did more with that poor woman's hair in five minutes than any other cat could have done in a good half hour. The Professor tried to explain that it was only the cat, and begged his wife not to injure the flying apparatus. It didn't seem to occur to him that he ought to run to his wife's assistance, till I had taken him by the shoulders, and started him upstairs, I don't want you to think for a moment that he wasn't anxious to help his wife, but he was so in the habit of looking at things from a scientific point of view, that he forgot that while he was explaining things Mrs. Van Wagener might be clawed to such an extent that she would never be recognised by her nearest friend. When he had once grasped the idea that she needed his help he fairly flew upstairs and succeeded in transferring the cat's attentions to himself. Then I had to come to the rescue, for the Professor not having hair enough to interest the cat, she had devoted her efforts to beautifying his countenance, and if I hadn't succeeded in pulling her off, and tossing her out of the window, she would have torn his eyes out, or at all events ruined his nose. Her balloon had burst during her interview with Mrs. Van Wagener, and consequently when I threw her out of the window she struck the ground pretty heavily, and smashed up the paddle-wheels. We never saw her again, but every little while there would appear in the newspapers stories of a strange animal with a glittering tail, that haunted the lower part of Illinois. You see the cat couldn't rid herself of her steering attachment, and she naturally wasn't willing to show herself in what she considered a disgraceful dress.

"Mrs. Van Wagener made peace with her husband on condition of his making a solemn promise never to have anything more to do with flying cats. I consider that she was wrong in so doing, for Van Wagener's invention was bound to be a success. If he had been allowed to carry it out, flying cats would have become as common as bats, and every sparrow in the States would have emigrated. If it wasn't that I don't believe in using other people's inventions, I would go in for the manufacture of flying cats myself; and as it is, I believe that Edison will some day hear of Van Wagener's experiment, and will immediately invent a flying cat, and spend the rest of his life in trying to make the invention work."

***

5: A Tricycle Made For Two

A STREET ORGAN was playing "A Bicycle Made For Two," and as we listened sadly, and wondered how long England would be permitted to be the refuge of Anarchists and organ-grinders, the Colonel remarked to no one in particular, "A bicycle made for two may do well enough in this country, but if you Britishers had ever seen Professor Van Wagener's tricycle made for two, you would never think of singing about any kind of bicycle."

"I think I was telling you the other day," continued the Colonel, "about Professor Van Wagener, the great electrical sharp, who used to live next door to me in New Berlinopolisville. A mighty clever man he was in many other directions than that of electricity. He was always inventing something. I have known that man to get up at four o'clock on a winter's morning and invent straight along till noon. Show him a piece of machinery, I don't care what it might be, and he would instantly go to work to improve it.

"I had a reaping-machine in my field, and one day the Professor happened to see it. Nothing would satisfy him but to put an attachment to that machine so that it would gather the straw into bundles, and tie them neatly around the middle with ropes which were to be twisted out of straw by a second attachment to the machine. He worked at that idea for several months, until he got it to suit him. Then he built a brand new machine with his two attachments, and took it into my field to exhibit it. He was so proud of it that he sent out written invitations to about all his acquaintances to come and see it, and he told me that this time he had made an invention that was going to make his fortune and give him a reputation that would lie over any other man's, except, perhaps, George Washington's.

"The machine was a big, clumsy-looking affair, and was run by a horse that had a sort of stall in about the middle of it, where he couldn't play any tricks, and where the machine couldn't play any tricks on him. The Professor had his wife with him and his wife's cousin, who was a very pretty girl, though I don't believe Van Wagener ever noticed that anything was pretty unless it was some sort of scientific apparatus. The horse was started up, and the machine began to reap and to tie up bundles of straw, just as the Professor had said it would do. His wife's cousin wanted to see just how the thing worked, so he took her alongside of the machine, and before they fairly knew what was the matter the machine had tied the Professor and the girl into a bundle, and tied them so tight that they could hardly breathe. Naturally the people who had been invited to see the machine work, rushed up to help the Professor and the young woman, and presently that machine had most of the leading citizens of New Berlinopolisville tied up in neat bundles, and lying around on the ground calling for help, except such of them as had been wrapped round with straw, and were too nearly suffocated to speak. The machine kept on its way, seeking for more citizens and more straw, until some man had sense enough to stop the horse, and so put an end to the performance. There isn't any manner of doubt that it was a talented machine, but when the leading citizens had been set free, they seemed very much prejudiced against it. Some of them were for killing the Professor, and some of them were for killing the horse, but they finally compromised, and arranged their differences by smashing the machine into scrap iron, and informing the Professor that if he ever calculated to build another one, he had better dig his grave first, and sit close to the edge of it. I can't say that I blame them very much, for when a man is violently tied up with some other man whom he don't particularly like, or with some other man's wife, knowing all the time that the woman's husband is spry with his weapons and unwilling as a general rule to argue a matter until after he has got through shooting, it stands to reason that he won't feel particularly friendly to the machine that has done the tying. I never heard any more about that machine from the Professor, and it's my belief that when his wife got him home she let him know that he couldn't be tied up in the same bundle with a good-looking cousin without inviting the just indignation of a virtuous and devoted wife.

"Another time the Professor was taking a drive with me in my buggy, and it struck him as a bright idea that the bit and reins ought to be superseded by electricity. So he goes to work and invents a new way of driving a horse by pressing buttons instead of pulling on the reins. He had wires running from the seat of his wagon to different parts of the horse. You pressed one button, and the horse got a shock on the right side of his face that made him turn to the left. You pressed another button, and a shock on the left cheek turned him to the right. A wire connecting with his tail was used to stir him up instead of a whip, and a strong current sent into his forelegs was expected to make him stop dead still whenever it was turned on. All these currents came from a battery under the seat of the wagon, and the buttons that turned them on were let into the seat on either side of the driver.

"Van Wagener took his wife out to drive in this new style of wagon as soon as he got it perfected, and to all appearances it worked very well. He stopped in front of Dr. Smith's drug store, which was our leading drug store at the time, though afterwards the proprietor was crusaded by the Women's Christian Temperance Union, who smashed all his whiskey bottles and knocked out the heads of his whiskey barrels, and left nothing in his establishment except a few medicine bottles and a little perfumery. Well, as I was saying, the Professor stopped in front of the drug store, and Mrs. Van Wagener climbed down and bought some mustard-plasters, or something of the sort, and then climbed into the wagon again. She was a middling heavy woman, which was a little strange, considering how strict she was in matters of morality and religion, for your strict woman is nearly always more or less bony, and she sat down on the seat with considerable force, and directly on the top of about half the electric buttons, she having forgot all about them. The horse couldn't quite understand the signals, but when he felt a current setting up his spine and another in his left cheek, and another in his right cheek, he saw that as a matter of self-respect he ought to kick that wagon to flinders, and accordingly he started in to do it. The Professor yelled to him to whoa, and he turned on all his electricity at once, hoping to shock the horse into some sort of paralysis, but it didn't work. The horse just kicked the whole front of the wagon into smithereens, and when he struck the battery and spilt the acids over his legs, he remembered that he had an engagement in the next county, and he started to keep it at a pace of about thirty miles an hour. It didn't much matter to the Professor and his wife, who had been scattered all over the neighborhood when the horse's heels first struck the seat, but when they came to, and Smith had plastered them up with brown paper and arnica, Van Wagener remarked that, in his opinion, horses were played out, and that in this age electricity ought to be made to take the place of such a grossly unscientific animal."

The Colonel paused, and pulled his hat down over his eyes as was his custom when he had finished speaking and desired to smoke in silence. He was reminded by Thompson that, however interesting his reminiscences of Professor Van Wagener might be, they had not yet included the promised account of the tricycle made for two.

"Beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the Colonel. "I clean forgot about that. The truth is, when I get to remembering about the Professor's inventions there are so many of them that I generally forget the particular one I started out to tell about. It's the same way with this hyer village of London. I've started out half a dozen times to go to see the Tower, and I strike so many things that interest me that I have never yet got there. Take your cigar shops, for instance. Why, they are fifty years behind the age, and when I go into one I get talking with the proprietor, and trying to show him the error of his ways, till first I know it's too late to go anywhere.

"But about this hyer tricycle. When bicycles and tricycles came to New Berlinopolisville, the Professor was mightily interested in them. Not that he admired them, but because, as he said, they were unscientific. He demonstrated with not more than half a slateful of figures that it took more exertion to drive a bicycle a mile than it would take to run that mile with a man's own legs. There was no getting around his figures. They proved that a man weighing a hundred and forty pounds and driving an ordinary bicycle at the rate of ten miles an hour consumed, say, five hundred foot pounds of energy— if anybody knows what that means, and I don't much believe anybody does. Well, the same man could run a mile with the consumption of only four hundred pounds, leaving a surplus of a hundred pounds for the benefit of the poor. 'If these young fellows that I see on bicycles had any sense,' said Van Wagener, 'they would drive their machines by electricity, and avoid the awful consumption of energy.' No sooner had this idea struck him than he proceeded to invent an electric engine for bicycles, and in the course of the summer he had his invention worked out to his own satisfaction.

"The engine and the storage battery took up a good deal of space, and so the Professor, instead of applying it to a bicycle, built a big tricycle with seats for two, and fitted his engine to that. He calculated that it would drive the machine for twelve hours at a speed of fifteen miles' on a level, and that it would carry two persons weighing in the aggregate 500 lbs. with perfect ease. When the machine was all finished the Professor wheeled it out of the yard and down to a turn in the road, where Mrs. Wagener couldn't see him, and made ready for a start. You see his wife was prejudiced against his inventions, and always said that he should never try experiments with new inventions so long as she could prevent it. Just as the Professor was climbing aboard the tricycle, Widow Dumfries comes along, and, being young and full of spirits, besides being a mighty sociable sort of woman, she told Van Wagener that it looked mighty selfish for him to start out alone, and that if he wanted to be real accommodating he would give her a little ride on his machine. The Professor never could say no, except to another scientific person; and so he told Mrs. Dumfries to get into the front seat and he would take her down to her house, which was about a quarter of a mile down the road.

"The machine went along all right, and the Professor worked his way cautiously along the main street with his brake on most of the time; but as soon as he got in the outskirts of the town he turned on the full current and let her whiz. The widow was delighted, and said that she had never enjoyed anything half so much in all her life. Pretty soon the machine came to a middling steep descent in the road, and the Professor started to shut off the current and put on his brake. But there was something wrong about his levers. He couldn't shut off the current to save his life, and when he put the brake hard on, hoping that it would stop the thing, the brake broke.

"They tell me that the tricycle went down that hill at about sixty miles an hour; that is, after it got well under headway, you understand. Nothing that Van Wagener could do had any effect in slowing it down. The engine was working for all it was worth, and she meant to keep on working according to contract. When the tricycle struck the level ground she slowed down to about eighteen miles an hour, for the Professor had given her rather more power than he had intended to give her. There weren't any hills or any ascents worth mentioning for the machine to climb, for Berlinopolisville is about six hundred feet above the lake, and the road that the Professor had taken keeps descending all the way.

"When the Professor found that he couldn't stop the tricycle, he was a pretty badly frightened man. He couldn't possibly throw himself off without mixing himself all up with the wheels, and breaking most of his bones. Besides, he couldn't desert the widow in any such way as that. You may ask why he didn't turn the machine round, and steer for home. The reason was that he couldn't possibly turn it at the speed it was running at without capsizing the whole concern. The only thing he could possibly do was to keep in the middle of the road, and let the machine run till the power was exhausted, which, if he had made no mistake in his calculation, wouldn't be less than twelve hours.

"Mrs. Dumfries enjoyed the thing at first, but after a little while she suspected that something was wrong. The Professor told her that he was sorry to say that he couldn't stop the tricycle, but that if she sat tight, and they had middling good luck, he calculated that they wouldn't come to any great harm. The widow wasn't easily frightened. She reflected that she had on her best pair of shoes and stockings, and declared that if there was to be an accident she would have to make the best of it. The longer the ride lasted the less chance there seemed to be of running into anything, for the teams that the Professor and Mrs. Dumfries did meet mostly went into the ditch on one side of the road or the other, before the tricycle had a chance to run into them. The Professor, being a kind-hearted man, and disliking profane language, was considerably troubled when he saw a horse and buggy, or, maybe, a pair of horses and loaded wagon, pile up in the ditch, and heard the remarks that the driver made— that is, in those cases where he was in a condition to make remarks; but he couldn't stop to explain or apologize.

"It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the tricycle started, and about two o'clock Mrs. Dumfries was about as tired and as hungry as they make 'em. She called to the Professor and asked him to tell her the truth about the time it would take the machine to run down. He told her that, if he hadn't made any miscalculation, she would run till about nine o'clock that night; but that it was a bright moonlight night, and he thought everything would go well, unless there should happen to be a turnpike gate on the road, and it should happen to be closed. At that the widow broke down, and, leaning back with her head on the Professor's waistcoat, fainted away. All he could do was to hold her tight with one arm, so that she couldn't slip off the machine, and to steer with the other hand. Just then he began to meet friends and acquaintances. He afterwards told me that it seemed as if there was a procession of them coming up the road, and before they went off into the ditch they all recognized the Professor, and he heard several of them say, 'Why, that there ain't Mrs. Van Wagener! Well, I never would have thought it!' or similar remarks, showing a want of confidence in the Professor's motives. He tried to call out to two or three people whom he knew very well that the machine had run away with him, but they mostly misunderstood him, and said, when they got back to town, that Van Wagener had up and told them in so many words that he was running away with the widow.

"Night came along and the moon came up, but the road was lined with trees, and it was fair to middling dark. Mrs. Dumfries had come to long before this; but she had lost her temper, and told the Professor he was a brute, and that her brother would settle with him for his outrageous conduct. Once a man hailed the tricycle and ordered it to stop, and, finding that it would not stop, fired three revolver shots after it, without, however, doing any harm. Once the machine ran into an old woman who was crossing the road, and was either deaf or blind, but there wasn't very much of her, and the tricycle went over her like a horse taking a low fence. If it hadn't been for the excitement of the ride, and the thought of what the consequences would probably be when Mrs. Van Wagener should come to know about it, the Professor would probably have dropped exhausted, for he wasn't a very strong man. However, he held out well, and about nine o'clock, just as the machine was approaching a tavern that stood alongside of the road, the current gave out and the tricycle stopped.

"There wasn't any other house nearer than four miles, and there was the Professor and Mrs. Dumfries, nearly two hundred miles from New Berlinopolisville, and about as tired, and about as hungry, and about as mad as any two people ever were. Of course they had to stop at the tavern till morning, and it took them two more days to get home, partly by stage coach and partly by rail. When they did get home the Professor found that Mrs. Van Wagener had gone to her mother's, leaving word with a neighbor that she should begin proceedings for a divorce at once, and that the widow's brother had started out with his Winchester rifle, remarking to the Professor's friends that they could make arrangements for the funeral at once, and that he would send the body on to them at their expense, if they so desired.

"The end of it all was that I went to see the widow, and then I hunted up Mrs. Van Wagener, and finally explained things so that the Professor's wife came back again, and the widow's brother allowed that he was satisfied that it was a case which didn't require any shooting. But after that you could never get the Professor to listen to the word tricycle, which was a pity, for in my opinion there was a fortune in that invention of his if it had been properly put on the market. But that's the way with these scientific men. When they make a good invention they don't know it, and when they invent something that is of no earthly use they spend their bottom dollar trying to get people to take an interest in it."

***

6: A Flying March

"ONE DAY Professor Van Wagener and I were walking together on our way to the post office when we met a regiment of infantry. Of course we stopped to look at them, for I don't suppose there is a man living who doesn't like to look at soldiers. Even a regiment of Chicago counter-jumpers, dressed in a ridiculous uniform, and playing at soldiers, interests me, and as for this particular regiment it was one of the best in the Federal Army, and that's saying a good deal. The Professor looked at the men in the critical sort of way that everybody puts on in such circumstances, and presently he said: 'Colonel! isn't it your opinion that a regiment that could march two hundred miles a day would be much more efficient than one that could only march twenty miles?'

" 'All other things being equal, it certainly would,' I replied; but the soldier who can  march a hundred miles a day, not to speak of two hundred, isn't born yet.'

" 'I think you are mistaken, Colonel!' said he. 'It's my idea that by the use of proper means it can be made just as easy to march at the rate of twenty miles an hour as it now is to march at the rate of four miles an hour.'

" 'There you are again!' said I. 'You're thinking of some invention that is going to revolutionise the art of warfare. My dear Professor! You've been revolutionising warfare ever since I knew you, but I haven't noticed that it has been revolutionised to any great extent.'

"Well! nothing more was said on the subject at that time, but about a month later Van Wagener came over to my house one morning with a big basket full of machinery and chemicals on his arm, and asked me to lend him the use of my back-yard for an hour or two, while he revolutionised the art of warfare. Of course, I told him that he could do anything in my back-yard that he might want to do, provided he didn't do it with dynamite or any other explosive, and he assured me that this time there was nothing in the slightest degree dangerous in what he meant to do.

" 'I will explain the whole matter to you,' he said, sitting down on a bench in my back-yard and wiping his forehead with a cloth stained with chemicals, for the basket was heavy and the day was hot.

" 'You remember we were speaking the other day about the marching abilities of infantry regiments. Now, let me ask you what it is that makes it hard work for a soldier to march, or for any man to walk. Isn't it the force of gravitation which holds him down to the ground, and prevents him from lifting his foot except by a muscular effort ?'

" 'I suppose it is,' said I.

" 'Very good,' said Van Wagener. 'Now if you could reduce the force of gravitation one half, or, say, two-thirds, it would be just that much easier for a man to walk than it is in existing circumstances, wouldn't it?'

" 'I admit it,' said I. For it was always necessary to admit Van Wagener's premises, provided you wanted to carry on a conversation with him.

" 'You are really an intelligent man, Colonel!' said he, 'although at times you are rather slow to perceive the merits of any valuable invention. As I was saying, the thing to do if want to make walking or marching easier is to reduce the force of gravitation. Now, this is what I propose to do in the case of every individual soldier. Why no one has hit on the same idea long ago is something I can't understand. But that's the way with most inventors. They never see what is directly before their eyes, but always look for something that is miles away.'

"As this was what I had said hundreds of times to Van Wagener about his own inventions, I began to think that he wasn't as utterly unteachable as a scientific man generally is.

" 'Please to look at my shirt for a moment, continued the Professor. 'As you see, it is made of very thin cloth covered with a coating of india-rubber. Also, you will perceive that it is made of two thicknesses of rubber-cloth, joined together at the neck and the waist, and that just where the collar-button would ordinarily come at the back of my neck is a small valve. Now this shirt will hold just as many cubic feet of hydrogen gas as would be sufficient to lift a man of my weight, together with eighty pounds of arms and accoutrements.'

" 'Don't you find the rubber shirt rather warm?' I asked.

" 'It is a little warm,' he replied, "but I can easily overcome that. Besides, the warmth of the shirt has nothing to do with the question. The fact on which I wish you to fix your mind is that by filling this shirt with hydrogen I overcome the effect of gravitation. That is to say, I make myself as light as air.'

" 'Then you mean a soldier shall fly instead of march?' I said.

" 'Not at all,' said Van Wagener. I simply propose to make him so light that he will be able to take steps thirty or forty feet long, and to jump over hedges and streams with perfect ease.'

"I wanted to remind the Professor of a jumping machine that he had once invented, and that had nearly killed him when he tried to use it, but I kept quiet.

" 'Now,' said my friend, taking off his coat and waistcoat and wiping away the perspiration that was streaming down his face, 'I will proceed to give you a practical illustration of the value of my invention. This is the first time I have actually experimented with it, but I have absolute confidence in its practicability.'

"With that Van Wagener opened his basket and took out a sort of tin knapsack with a rubber tube attached to it.

"'This,' said he, is the generator. I fasten this on my back, and you will understand that if I were a soldier I should carry it outside my knapsack. I connect the tube with the shirt-valve, and turn this little stop-cock. The moment the stop-cock is turned the gas begins to generate, and flows through the tube into the shirt. When I have enough gas to reduce my weight one-half I shut off the supply, and march on my way, taking steps twenty feet long, and feeling almost as light as a bird. But first, I must fasten these leaden soles to my boots, so that I can be sure of preserving an upright attitude. You see, I shall be in just the same condition as a diver, the weight of whose body is reduced as he sinks in the water. He is obliged to wear shoes weighted with lead, for without them he might go down head first.'

"Van Wagener carefully tied his lead soles to his feet, and then he buckled the generator on his back and tried to turn the stop-cock of which he had spoken. He had so much difficulty in finding it that he asked me to turn it for him, which, of course, I did. Presently the gas began to hiss as it was generated, and the Professor began to swell as his shirt gradually filled. When it was apparently about half full he asked me to turn off the gas, and then he started to walk across my back-yard. There is no denying that the gas got in its work fairly well. Van Wagener went across that yard taking steps that were about ten feet long, and bounding gently into the air every time his feet touched the ground. Still, his walk was to all appearance the drunkest walk that has ever been seen since the days when Noah made his great invention of drunkenness.

"The Professor's body was swinging forwards and backwards and sideways, and was mostly at an angle of, say, fifty degrees with the ground. It was clear that if it hadn't been for the lead soles fastened to his boots, he would have done a good deal of walking on his head. I followed pretty close after him, and he evidently enjoyed himself immensely, for he kept calling out to me to notice how light he was, and demanding to know whether he hadn't knocked gravitation endways with his gas machine. Even when he came down with both feet in a briar bush, and stuck there until I pulled him out by main force, leaving a large proportion of his trousers in the bush, he never lost his spirits.

"He had walked two or three times round the yard when a little accident happened which interrupted his experiment. He came down with both feet on my cat's tail. Now Tommie was one of the best tempered cats I ever knew, that is to say so long as you treated him with proper respect. He was also the champion cat-fighter of New Berlinopolisville, and there wasn't hardly a night that he didn't have a match on with some rival cat, and, as a rule, he won it in two, or at the most three, rounds. He was lying asleep under a small rose bush when the Professor came down on his tail, and it irritated him, as was only natural. I should have been irritated myself if I had been in his place. Being mad all over, Tommie frees his mind with a few remarks, and then he makes a jump for the Professor's shoulder, where he stopped long enough to give him a couple of good ones on each cheek that drew the blood, and then he went over the fence in search of a quiet spot where he could make repairs to his tail.

"I came up to the Professor to sympathise with him while he was wiping the blood from his face, but he sang out to me not to bring my cigar anywhere near him, for the gas was leaking, and an explosion might be brought about. I could see that his size was rapidly growing less, and in a little while the gas had all escaped through half-a-dozen holes that the cat's claws had made in the shirt, and the Professor was able to walk like an ordinary Christian.

" 'I can't do anything more,' said Van Wagener, 'until I have mended the leaks in my shirt. And then he used a lot of scientific language about cats in general, which was excusable in the circumstances.

"I said to him that Tommie was one of the leading cats of New Berlinopolisville, and was universally respected. As for his getting angry when a scientific man with leaden soles landed on his tail, that was only human, and he ought not to blame the cat for it.

" 'I don't blame him so much for getting angry,' said Van Wagener, 'as I do for not taking any interest in science. But that's just the way with a cat. Any cat would sooner spoil an experiment than not. A friend of mine who does a good deal of vivisecting tells me that he has more trouble with cats than with any other animals. However, the mischief's done now, and there's no use in saying anything more. You'll admit, I think, that my experiment was a great success?'

" 'I'll admit,' said I, 'that any army in the world would run away from an enemy approaching in the same style as you circulated round my yard.'

"Wait till I have had a little more experience,' said the Professor. 'I did not have quite gas enough in my shirt, and my shoes were not quite heavy enough. When I find out the exact quantity of gas I ought to use, and the precise weight that needs to be attached to my feet, all that will be necessary will be practice. I venture to say that, with about three days of practice, I shall be able to walk at the rate of thirty miles an hour, with perfect steadiness, and without the least danger of accident. To-morrow, at about this hour, I will come back here with my shirt repaired, and everything ready for a final and conclusive experiment. I hope you will have the goodness to lock up that abominable cat, for I can't promise to succeed in any experiment if that beast is on hand.'

" 'All right,' said I, 'the cat shall be locked up. But I ask you what will happen when your army marches across country with their shirts inflated with gas? Cats are awfully common, and if the army treads on a cat's tail there'll be a panic that will be worse than a defeat.'

" 'Van Wagener didn't condescend to answer me, but he marched out of my yard with his basket on his arm, and a glow of triumph in his face which struck me as being a little previous, in view of all the facts.

"Well! the next day the Professor turned up at the same hour in the very best of spirits. This time he had extra heavy lead weights for his feet, and when everything was ready I turned on the supply of gas for him until he judged that his weight had been reduced to about one-third of what it ordinarily was. Then he gave me the word to turn off the gas, and he started to walk across the yard. His walk was only a little drunker in appearance than it had been the day before, but he certainly did get over the ground at a tremendous rate. Every time his feet touched the earth he bounded about ten feet into the air, and came down again a good thirty feet from where he had started.

"He went the length of the yard, which was fully five hundred feet, in no time at all, and as he passed me on the way back he was so excited that he tried to clap his feet together and to crow like a rooster. I don't say this was quite worthy of a respectable scientific man, but allowance must be made for an inventor who finds that his invention works. But the Professor made the biggest mistake in his life when he tried to clap his feet together. In so doing one of his lead soles, which had been tied on by the Professor himself with a sort of knot that was of no manner of use, dropped off, and Van Wagener went up into the air like a shot.

"I saw him trying to reach the stop-cock that shut off the gas from his shirt, but he could not find it, and it would have done him no good if he had found it. What that shirt needed was some sort of safety valve for letting the gas escape in case of accident, but Van Wagener had omitted to furnish it with any such valve. Without his lead sole he was considerably lighter than the atmosphere, and consequently there was nothing to prevent him from going up.

"There was a gentle breeze from the southward, and as Van Wagener rose slowly and seemed to be drifting towards the thickly-built part of the town, I was in hopes that he would be able to catch hold of some building and hold on till some one could come to his aid. He never said a word as he sailed upwards, but I'm ready to bet that he would have given a good deal if the cat could have jumped on him from the roof of the house and punctured his shirt. I sung out to him to keep cool, which is the easiest thing to say to a man who is in difficulties, but he simply smiled a resigned sort of smile, and disappeared behind the house.

"I ran out of the front door and chased the Professor, keeping my eye on him just as a sailor keeps his eye on a man who falls overboard, though there wasn't any chance of sending a lifeboat or, for that matter, a life-balloon after him. He drifted along at an elevation of perhaps fifty feet, and presently I saw that he was heading directly for the Presbyterian church. The church itself was only about thirty feet high from the ground to the roof, but it had a steeple that was a good hundred feet in height, though it didn't look it. In fact it looked as if it was lower than the Baptist steeple, which was only eighty-five feet high, and the Presbyterians used to win no end of bets by inducing strangers to bet on the comparative height of the two steeples. However, that is neither here nor there. Van Wagener drifted along amid the general enthusiasm of the inhabitants, who all rushed out of doors to see him, and imagined that he had contrived some new way of navigating the air, and was making a big success of it. Everybody said that this time the Professor had made the greatest invention of the century, and that New Berlinopolisville would have a chance to put up a monument to him, after his death, that would attract thousands of visitors. I said nothing, for nothing that I could say would be of any help towards getting the Professor down to the ground in safety, and I hadn't the heart to destroy the reputation that he had so suddenly and accidentally made.

"By rare good luck Van Wagener happened to hit the very top of the Presbyterian steeple, and he caught hold of it and held on for all that he was worth. There wasn't much to hold on to except the lightning rod, for, of course, there wasn't any cross there, and in the place where a cross ought to have been there was a big gilt pine-apple which was too big to put one's arms round. I never could understand why a gilt pine-apple was put there. asked the head deacon about it one day, but he didn't condescend to answer me, and merely suggested that I had better study the Scriptures. Now I've been in the habit of studying them ever since I was a boy, but I never remember coming across any allusion to pine-apples. Some day I'm going to inquire into the thing and get a satisfactory answer. My own idea is that, when the committee that was building the church came to deciding on a decoration for the top of the steeple, old Deacon Sammis, who was an importer of pine-apples, and bananas, and such, thought he could advertise his business by putting a big gilt pine-apple where nobody could fail to see it.

"By the time I got alongside of the church there were about two thousand people, men, women, and children, there, waiting to see the Professor fall, and speculating as to what extent he would be smashed by the time he should strike the ground. They were all in the best of spirits, as folks generally are when they are admitted free to some attractive show. Deacon Sammis was the only exception; he disapproved strongly of Van Wagener's conduct, and said that it was little better than sacrilege. Of course I knew that the Professor was in no danger of falling down. What he wanted to do was to avoid falling up whenever it should become necessary for him to let go his hold.

"I saw that the thing to do was to get a rope to him as soon as possible, calculating that he would have sense enough to know how to use it. The difficulty was how to get the rope to him, for the steeple was perfectly smooth on the outside, so that nobody could possibly climb it, and there was no ladder in the town that would reach half way up to the pine-apple. Pretty soon I saw my way. I sent a man to get two hundred feet of stout line, and then I found a boy who was flying a kite, and bought out his whole stock for fifty cents. I used to be a middling good kite-flyer when I was a boy, and it didn't take me very long to manoeuvre that kite so that the string fell across Van Wagener's shoulder, and I saw him seize it with one hand. Then I bent the two hundred feet of line to the kite-string, and shook it as a signal to the Professor to haul away. He did so, and in a little while he had one end of the line in his possession, and he cast the kite adrift, string and all.

"Any man who wasn't a scientific person would have known that I expected Van Wagener to tie the line to his ankles, and let me pull him gently down. But the Professor never thought of that. He tied the line fast to the lightning-rod, and started to slide down it. Naturally, his inflated shirt made that impossible. We could see him hanging on to the line with both hands, and with his body swinging out at right angles, but in spite of all he could do, he couldn't manage to climb down the line a single foot. The public got more excited than ever, and the betting on the Professor's ultimate fate was lively. But after a time he came to the conclusion that he had made a mistake, and I was never more relieved in my life than I was when I saw him climb back to his perch on the pine-apple, and begin to unfasten the line. He kept me on the anxious seat for the next ten minutes while he waited to rest, and then I was delighted to see him make the line fast to both his ankles.

"I hauled away on my end till the line was taut, and then Van Wagener let go his hold, and I began gently to gather him in. The crowd cheered when they saw what was going on, though there was a good deal of wrangling about the bets, which some people claimed that I had interfered with by providing Van Wagener with the means of escape. Of course there was something to be said in support of this view of the matter, for if it hadn't been for me the men who bet that Van Wagener would fall and kill himself must have won.

"However, the dispute was settled by arbitration, and Deacon Sammie, the arbitrator, declared that all bets were off in consequence of my interference, which, he added, was entirely justifiable in the circumstances. He wasn't a very sociable sort of chap, but he was a perfectly square man in all business dealings, and the public had confidence in him.

"It was a beautiful spectacle, the way in which the Professor came down as I hauled in on the line. He kept perfectly erect, but he also kept slowly revolving on his axis, as you might say. His arms were stretched out at right angles to his body in order to steady himself a little, and the general effect of him was that of an angel without wings, in the act of blessing the public. There was a sweet smile on his face when he came near enough for us to notice it, and his eyes were closed, probably because he felt a little dizzy, and that gave him a peaceful sort of look that aroused universal admiration. When he reached the ground I got a good hold of him, and slit his inflated shirt with my penknife. Then, when the gas had all escaped, I untied his legs, and giving him my arm, for he was more or less weak with the excitement of his adventure, I took him home, followed by a cheering and enthusiastic crowd composed of all the leading citizens of the place, without distinction of creed or politics.

"For my part I consider that Van Wagener's invention was a success, but, curiously enough, he never made any further experiments with it. You see, he had got a pretty big scare when he was drifting over the town, and clinging to the Presbyterian steeple, and the result was that he weakened, as you might say, on his invention. I never could get him to speak of it afterwards, and when I saw that it really troubled him to have me remind him of it, I dropped the subject. Now that Van Wagener is dead, it is open to any one to take up his invention and make a practical success of it. Of course, I don't intend to meddle in the thing. The world is good enough for me as it stands, and if I had my way there wouldn't be anything fresh invented for the next hundred years."

***

7: Incandescent Cats

"ONE DAY Professor Van Wagener comes into my house and says : 'Colonel! tell me how I can get two dozen full-grown cats without attracting attention.'

" 'What's the matter with you now?' says I. 'Are you lonesome, and going in for general cat society?'

" 'I'm going to try an electrical experiment,' says he. 'My wife's away from home, and now's the time to do it. I'm going to light my house with incandescent cats.'

" 'What are you giving us ?' said I. 'What's an incandescent cat, anyhow?'

" 'This is what I mean,' says Van Wagener. 'Did you ever rub a cat's fur in the dark?'

" 'Of course I have,' said I.

" 'Well, then,' says he, 'you know that a cat is just chock-full of electricity. I rubbed our cat for a full hour last night, and she gave off on an average twenty-five sparks a  second. I've calculated that at that rate a cat can furnish enough electricity to run candle-power Edison light for just as long as the cat's fur is rubbed. What's more, it isn't necessary to rub her fur. The electricity is there all the same, whether she is rubbed or not; and if you attach an Edison lamp to a cat, and complete the circuit, that lamp will burn just as long as the cat lives.'

" 'How are you going to complete the circuit?' said I, beginning to get interested in the thing.

" 'That's what I haven't worked out yet,' says he, 'and I want two dozen cats for experiments.'

" 'Limp or stiff cats?' says I.

" 'I don't know what you mean,' says Van Wagener.

" 'Why,' says I, 'there's one kind of cat that is as limp as a rag when you pick her up, and you can do pretty near anything with her. Then there's another kind that is as stiff as a poker; and when you try to handle a stiff cat, the chances are that you'll wish you had let her alone.'

" 'Then give me two dozen limp cats,' says he, and I'll be eternally obliged to you.'

"Well, I told a boy who worked in my shop to gather in some cats without making any fuss about it, and in the course of a couple of days he'd gathered in the two dozen that Van Wagener wanted. I didn't see much of Van Wagener for about a week, but by the caterwauling that came from his house I calculated that he was working at his experiments. At last he got through with them, and called me in to see how his invention worked.

"Van Wagener looked as if he had been having an argument with a dozen drunken Indian squaws. There wasn't an inch of his face that hadn't been scratched, and as for his hands, they were pretty near raw. However, he was about as proud and happy as they make 'em.

"The first thing I saw when I went into his front hall was a cat sleeping on the hall table, with an electric light on her back. You see, Van Wagener had completed his circuit by fastening the end of the cat's tail in the upper part of the lamp, and running two wires from the lower part of the lamp to the cat's ears. At least, this was the way that he explained the thing to me, though I don't profess to understand it. The lamp didn't give out very much light, but, as the Professor explained, that was because the cat was asleep.

" 'You just wait,' said he, 'till she begins to exercise her muscles, and then you'll see that I didn't make an overestimate when I said a cat could keep a ten candle-power light going.'

"Van Wagener's dining-room was lit up as brilliant as the saloon of a big steamer. He had six cats scattered round the room, and he had a small puppy-dog, who stirred up the electrical action of the cats, and kept their lamps burning, as the hymn says. There's no denying that the cats looked mighty unhappy, except when they were swearing at the puppy; and they had a way of creeping under the table and concealing their lights by squeezing between the furniture and the wall, that reminded me of the woman in Scripture who hid her light under a bushel. On the other hand, it was clear enough that one or two cats lighted up the room better than half-a-dozen gas-jets would have done, and accordingly I congratulated Van Wagener on the success of his invention.

" 'Here's my reading-cat,' says he, picking up a mighty limp and dispirited-looking cat, and setting her on the table. You see, when I want to read, I just put this cat on the table where the light falls over my left shoulder, and I take a book and sit down and read, as comfortable as you please.'

"So he sat down with an open book in his hand, and made believe to read, and the cat sat quiet until she judged the right moment had come, and then she made a jump and lit on the Professor's head, and started in to scalp him. But that's just the way with cats: you can't ever trust 'em any farther than you can see 'em.

"Van Wagener tore the cat off his head, losing considerable hair in the process, and then went on discoursing of the merits of his invention.

" 'Now,' said he, 'suppose you want to go down cellar. Instead of carrying a lamp or a candle, and setting the house on fire, you just start an incandescent cat down the cellar stairs ahead of you, and she lights up the whole place till you're ready to come up again. Or suppose you want to go out into your back-yard at night, where you can't carry a light on account of the wind. If you've got an incandescent cat, all you have to do is to let her out of the back door, and there you have the whole yard illuminated.'

" 'Do you calculate to go to bed by cat-light?' says I.

"Of course I do,' says he. "That is, provided I can get Mrs. Van Wagener to see the advantages of it. It's going to take considerable talking, however, before she can be got to allow a cat in her room. She is everlastingly prejudiced against science.'

"Now,' continued Van Wagener, 'we'll come into the parlour, and I'll bring in the dining-room cats, and you'll see what a brilliant effect a dozen incandescent cats will make.'

"There were six cats in the parlour already, and when Van Wagener had routed them out from under the sofa and from behind the chairs, and had brought in his six dining-room cats and the puppy, there is no doubt that the room was, as you might say, a blaze of light. But while the Professor was lecturing on the cheapness of the new light, which cost absolutely nothing to run except what the cats might eat, one of the brightest of the cats had a fit, and took to running round the room at about fifty miles an hour, and producing the effect of a big Catherine-wheel that had broke loose and was celebrating the Fourth of July on its own hook. Then the other cats joined in the circus, and what with the upsetting of the furniture, and the smashing of Mrs. Van Wagener's china images, and the barking of the puppy, and the yelling and swearing of the cats, that parlour was almost as lively a place as a man could wish to see.

"The circus lasted till the original cat who had started the thing with a fit, fell down exhausted, and two other cats who had engaged in a rough and tumble fight, had filled the air with black and grey fur. Then things sort of quieted down, and most of the cats got together under the sofa, and freed their minds in language that I wouldn't like to repeat. Only two of the lamps were broken, but the rest of them either went entirely out or burned mighty dim; and Van Wagener, when he reflected on what his wife would probably say when she should come to see the state of her parlour, was a little down in the mouth; or, as you might say, a prey to the devouring element of grief.

"However, he braced up after a little while, and said that the only discouraging feature of the affair was the fact that a cat's electricity seemed to give out after too much excitement. He maintained that the cats could be trained to behave as incandescent cats ought to behave, but that it would probably take time and patience to train them.

" 'Thinking it over,' said he, "I'm not a bit discouraged. I've demonstrated that cats can be used for lighting purposes, and that is all I set out to do. The invention is all right, and just as soon as the cats are trained properly, they will supersede all other means of lighting houses. I've got a week before my wife comes home, and by that time I'll have those cats in a first-class state of discipline.' With that he gets a broom and starts the cats out from under the sofa, and turns off their electricity, so as not to waste it; and then I said 'Good-night,' and left him to carry his cats down cellar, one by one, and put them to bed for the night.

"About two days later there was to be a great Democratic torchlight procession in the evening, it being pretty near election time. Now Van Wagener was a Democrat, and when he heard that the procession was going to pass his house, he said he would illuminate. I told him that if he wanted to illuminate he had better stick to candles; but he said No; he would illuminate with cats, and with nothing else.

"So he set to work and fitted shelves in the inside of his two parlour windows and the two windows of the front room upstairs; and when night came he had six cats seated on the shelf in each window and tied by a string around the neck, so that they couldn't jump down and interfere with the illumination.

"Just before the procession reached the house he turned on his cats, and they made a first-class illumination, which laid over anything in the line of illumination that any of the neighbours had done. The cats seemed on the whole satisfied to sit in the windows and I complimented Van Wagener on the progress he had made in training them.

"By and by the procession came along and turned into our street, with about a dozen brass bands playing— all playing different tunes at the same time. It was more than the cats could stand; and I don't blame the beasts, and you wouldn't either, if you had ever heard the bands of a political procession. The cats sort of unanimously, as you might say, agreed to withdraw from the scene; but, of course, the strings held them so that they couldn't get off the shelves. Then they set up the most tremendous caterwauling that you ever dreamed of, and began jumping like mad. Two or three of them-I can't exactly remember how many— broke through the window-glass and hung outside by the string round their necks, kicking and screaming at the top of their lungs. That inspirited those that were inside to go in for a free fight, and every cat clutched the next cat, and the fur began to fly.

"Now most of the members of that procession were Irishmen, and when they saw the state of things in Van Wagener's windows they seemed to be considerably amused, until one man sang out that Van Wagener was insulting Ireland by getting up a show of Kilkenny cats. That was enough. The crowd took up with the idea at once, and the procession halted while the Professor's house was being cleaned out. There wasn't a pane of glass left in the windows, and every stick of furniture in the house was smashed and thrown out of doors. Van Wagener tried to remonstrate; but after he had been rolled in the mud, and his ribs pretty near kicked in, he thought it best to maintain a dignified silence.

"When the procession moved on again you would have thought that there had been a fire in Van Wagener's house, followed by a cyclone and an earthquake. Of course, I wasn't so foolish as to mix myself up in the matter, for one man can't do much in arguing with a thousand excited Irishmen. So I waited till things were quiet, and then I went out and brought him into my own house, and lent him some clothes and brown paper.

"If you'll believe it, what troubled the man most was not the wrecking of his house, or the treatment he had received from the mob, but the fact that his two dozen trained cats had bolted. Nobody ever saw a tail of any of them after that night.

"Van Wagener didn't have the heart to try to train a new lot, especially as Mrs. Van Wagener was about due at the remains of the family mansion. He never made another attempt to put his invention of incandescent cats to practical use; but he always maintained that cats would some day supersede dynamos for the production of electricity, and you couldn't argue him out of that belief. don't know what took place when Mrs. Van Wagener came home; but according to my idea, the Professor didn't have a very cheerful time— anyway, nobody saw him for about a week, and then he came out on the street wearing a wig.

"After that Van Wagener turned his attention to illuminating paints, and talked about a plan for lighting houses by means of dogs painted with illuminating paint. That's an idea that might be made to work; for a dog can be made to take an interest in science, while a cat never takes any interest in anything, unless it is either wicked or good to eat. That's one way in which a cat resembles a Frenchman, and it isn't the only way, as I could convince you if I had the time, which I don't happen to have just now."

***

8: A Scientific Trap

“I WAS speaking to Professor Van Wagener about a new burglar alarm that I had ordered for my house, and that was warranted to ring a bell in my bedroom every time a burglar should try to open a window or a door. Van Wagener took the ground that any contrivance for notifying a householder of the presence of burglars, was unscientific, and when he called anything unscientific, it meant that he regarded it with loathing and contempt.

" 'All these burglar alarms, and I've seen dozens of them,' said Van Wagener, 'are intended to frighten burglars away from a house. Now what would you think of a mousetrap that was designed to frighten mice away from its neighbourhood? Wouldn't you call that an unscientific method of dealing with the mouse evil? The aim of every man who lives in a house should be to catch burglars, not to frighten them away. I don't want anything  about my house that will frighten a burglar if he attempts to break into it. On the contrary, I want to encourage him to break in, and then prevent him from breaking out again.'

" 'You had better invent some scientific method of dealing with burglars that will put an end to burglary for ever,' said I. Van Wagener didn't know it, but my intention was to say something sarcastic, for I had never yet known him to make an invention that wasn't a failure. However, he instantly said that my suggestion was an excellent one, and that he thanked me warmly for it. He was always a grateful sort of chap. I've known him to thank a man for blowing him up in his laboratory, merely because the explosion led to the discovery of a new explosive about fifty times more dangerous than dynamite.

"Well, about a month or so later, Van Wagener came to me and said: 'Colonel! You remember, perhaps, our little conversation about burglar alarms. I have followed your advice, and invented a method of protecting a house from burglars which is not only scientific, but practicable.

" 'Then it must be something entirely new in science,' said I.

" 'So it is,' said Van Wagener, never noticing my little sarcasm. That was the only fault the man had. You might just bury him twenty feet deep in sarcasm, so to speak, and he wouldn't notice it.

" 'As I told you,' resumed the Professor, 'the object of a man who attacks the burglar problem from a scientific standpoint, should be to catch burglars instead of frightening them. Now this is precisely what my invention does. I make my house a burglar trap, and I bait it with silver or money, or anything else that is portable and valuable. The burglars enter the trap, but they can't get out again, and in the morning I hand them over to the police. Thus, you see, I not only prevent my house from being robbed, but I constantly diminish the number of burglars in the community by the exact amount of my midnight catch. This is what I call a scientific method, and I think you will have to admit that it is also a practical one.'

" 'I shall know more about it when I see it in action,' I replied. ' Your inventions are always mighty ingenious, and sound very well in theory, but I never really enjoy them until I see them in operation.'

"A few days later Van Wagener asked me to come and see his new burglar trap. He led me into his dining-room, which was on the ground floor at the back of the house, and was just the sort of room that a burglar would have selected who wanted to break into the house in a quiet and unassuming way. I noticed that both the windows stood wide open, and that there was a lot of silver-ware on the table in the middle of the room, but I couldn't see any signs of the trap that the Professor spoke of.

" 'This is a handy room for a burglar,' said I, but where is the trap that is to catch him?'

"The room was carpeted with a Persian rug that, like all rugs, was a good deal too small for the floor. Why the missionaries don't do something about it is what I can't understand. If any missionary will undertake to teach the Persians to make full-sized rugs that will fit a Christian floor, I will engage to contribute handsomely to his salary.

"Around the edge of Van Wagener's rug was a border of some sort of thin stuff that was about a yard wide, and Van Wagener, turning this back, showed me that there was a sheet of iron under the entire length and width of it. He also pointed out that on each side of the door there ran a small wire which was connected with the sheet of iron at one end, while the other end apparently passed through the partition and out into the front hall. As soon as I saw these wires I knew that electricity played some part in Van Wagener's burglar trap.

" 'This room,' said my friend, 'is my burglar trap, and as you see, I keep it well baited with silver plate, and leave the windows open, so that any burglar can enter without the slightest difficulty. After he gets into the room, he will, of course, walk towards the table where the silver plate stands, and in so doing he will step on a yielding board, the deflection of which will turn on a powerful electric current, that will run through the sheet of iron that borders the room.

" 'Now when the burglar has gathered up the silver, and starts to climb out of the window, he will necessarily step on the iron plate, and will receive an electric shock that will temporarily paralyse him. The same thing will happen if he tries to reach the door, so as to escape in that direction. The shock will not kill him, though it will make him feel extremely uncomfortable, and the moment he can pull himself together he will roll off the iron into the middle of the room. He will probably test my apparatus two or three times before he is fully satisfied with it, and then he will wait in the middle of the room till I turn off the current in the morning, and hand him over to the police.'

" 'All this time the window will remain open,' said I. 'If any other burglar should happen to look in, your man would explain the situation to him, and the newcomer would contrive some plan for releasing him. There's the weak point in your invention.'

" 'Not at all,' replied the Professor. 'Your remark, Colonel, only shows that you don't understand human nature. When I catch a burglar in my trap, he will be only too glad to see another burglar caught. If any one looks in at the window, the man in the trap will invite him to come in, and I shouldn't be at all surprised if the trap should be sprung half-a-dozen times in the course of the night.'

"It seemed to me that there was a certain amount of merit in the Professor's burglar trap, though as far as I was concerned I preferred to keep burglars on the outside of my house, and let the police have the exclusive pleasure of capturing them. I waited with some interest to see how the invention would work, and as expected, I didn't have to wait very long.

"At that time New Berlinopolisville was full of burglars. That town was always remarkable for enterprise, and I have seen the day when there would be a fire, or a bank failure, or a burglary, every twenty-four hours. The very first night Van Wagener set his trap he caught no fewer than five burglars. Two of them entered the house together, and the other three came in one by one, and were welcomed with enthusiasm by their predecessors, who showed the same desire to have companions in their misfortune that the Professor had predicted they would show. In the morning Van Wagener sent for the police, and when he turned off the electricity, and the police entered the dining-room, the burglars surrendered as meekly as a Chinese army.

"After that Van Wagener set his trap every night, and its average yield for six consecutive weeks was three burglars per week, not including casual tramps who came into the house to sleep, without any really burglarious intentions. Naturally the burglars grew shy and scarce in course of time, but Van Wagener never failed to set his trap every night. He had a man-servant whose business it was to turn off the current of electricity at seven o'clock every morning provided nothing had been caught.

"Van Wagener thought his man-servant was a jewel, until one day he caught him in the act of drinking his best champagne, and on examination discovered that the man had drunk seven dozen in the course of the preceding two months. Of course he was promptly discharged, but as his month was not up until the following day the Professor allowed him to remain in the house as usual that night.

"Now it happened that on that very night, Van Wagener was to give a big dinner party to some thirty scientific chaps and their wives, who had come to New Berlinopolisville to attend a scientific convention. Mrs. Van Wagener was there, of course, and so was her mother, an old lady who had a very poor opinion of the Professor, and didn't hesitate to express it on every convenient occasion.

"Dinner was served at seven o'clock, and lasted for a good two hours, for the reason that the scientific chaps were so busy discussing all sorts of theories, and illustrating them with diagrams made with knives and forks and chicken bones and pieces of bread, that it took them a long time to dispose of their food.

"About nine o'clock, Mrs. Van Wagener rose up and suggested that everybody should go into the drawing-room, where a German chemical chap was going to deliver a sort of lecture. So the Professor said grace, and a general movement was made towards the door which had been closed by the servant when he left the room.

"Mrs. Van Wagener led the way, and just as she was about to put her hand on the knob of the door, she gave a tremendous shriek, and rolled over on the floor in the worst sort of convulsions. Major Wilkins, who was a middling heavy man, weighing as I should judge about three hundred and fifty pounds, went to help her, and the first thing he knew he fell all over her, striking out in all directions with his arms and legs as if he was an army mule trying to reach a regiment that was a mile or two beyond kicking range. Mrs. Van Wagener's mother and three scientific chaps were the next victims, and they all went down in a heap.

"By this time Professor Van Wagener judged that it was time for him to take a hand in the proceedings, so he sung out that there was no occasion to be alarmed, and that somebody had accidentally turned on an electric current which he would instantly proceed to turn off. This explanation didn't seem to satisfy any one.

"The people who were writhing on the iron border kept yelling out that they were dying, and those who were standing in safety in the middle of the room crowded around the Professor, and informed him that he was probably a fiend of the deepest dye. But Van Wagener was as cheerful as if nothing had happened. He called out that if every one would stay close to the dining-table they would experience no sort of inconvenience, and he assured those who were being tied up into knots by the electricity, that it could do them no possible harm, and that he would turn the current off the moment his other friends would permit him to touch the bell and call the servant. With that the crowd around the Professor dispersed a little, and he went to the bell which was on the other side of the room, with a confident step and a sweet smile.

"As might have been expected of a scientific man, he forgot all about the iron border that ran round all the room, and consequently as soon as he stepped on it in order to reach the bell, his feet shot from under him and he came down with a crash, making a remark that sounded more like theology than science and that filled the ladies with horror.

"However, the Professor had the presence of mind to roll over and over until he was clear of the iron border, and then he sat up and said that if his wife and the rest of the sufferers would imitate his example, they would find that their sufferings would cease. In the course of a few minutes they managed to follow his advice, and when they had recovered a little from their fright they expressed their opinion of the occurrence in a way that must have been very disappointing to Van Wagener. Nothing would induce them to believe that he had not wilfully intended to set a trap for them, and they were so occupied in denouncing him that they would not give him the least chance of explaining himself. Finally the Major, who was one of the most influential citizens of New Berlinopolisville, proposed that the Professor should be forcibly seated where the current could have fair chance at him, a proposal which was received with cheers, and would undoubtedly have been carried out, were it not that every one was afraid to quit the centre of the room and approach near enough to the iron border to place the Professor in contact with the current.

"When it was clear that nobody could ring the bell, the entire company yelled at the top of their lungs for the servants, but as it afterwards appeared, there were no servants in the house except the cook, and she was in the kitchen, which was so far off that she could not hear the cries for help. The man-servant whom Van Wagener had discharged had turned on the current as soon as he saw that dinner was nearly over, and then left the house in company with Mrs. Van Wagener's watch, a lot of bracelets, and other jewellery belonging to Mrs. Van Wagener and her mother.

"It was not until the prisoners had waited for nearly two hours that the cook happened to pass through the front hall, and came into the dining-room to see if there happened to be any wine left in the decanters. When she opened the door there would have been a general cry of 'Thank God!' had it not been that the guests were, as I have said, nearly all scientific persons, and didn't believe in anything except science. However, the coming of the cook did them no sort of good, for the moment she set her foot on the iron border she rolled over, and went into convulsions on her own account.

"She was just one more added to the number of mourners, and the Professor's hope that he could tell her how to turn off the current vanished.

"To make a long story short I will just say that Van Wagener and his dinner party remained prisoners until seven o'clock the next morning, when the Professor managed to hail a policeman out of the window, and instructed him to break into the house, and turn off the electricity. The front door was locked, but the policeman sent for one of the leading burglars of the town, and told him to pry open the door with his jemmy, which the burglar did in a way that put an end to its usefulness as a door, and showed that even the best of burglars may cherish a revengeful spirit. When the current was finally turned off, and Van Wagener's guests were able to walk out of the dining-room, they departed without any unnecessary delay, refusing with great earnestness the Professor's invitation to stop to breakfast, and heaving scientific expressions at him as they went out of the door.

"You never saw a man so heartbroken as he was when he told me all about the affair the following evening. He said he could have understood a little display of dissatisfaction, had his guests been people who knew nothing about science, but it was a deep grief to him to find that a party of scientific men could allow a little temporary inconvenience to distract their minds from the merits of an important invention, and actually to lead them to a display of manners as rude and unscientific as anything ever seen in a political convention.

"What was harder for the Professor to bear than even the language of his scientific friends, was the order Mrs. Van Wagener gave him to take his burglar-trap apparatus out of her house within twenty-four hours, if he did not wish her to leave him for good and all. Naturally he obeyed, and the next time I called on him I found that he had fitted ordinary burglar alarms to all his windows, and that he entertained a lower opinion than ever of the capacity of women to appreciate the great truths of science."

***

9: The Volcanic Valve

"I ALWAYS wanted Van Wagener," said the Colonel, "to visit Europe, and hob-nob with your scientific folks. But he wouldn't do it. He said that nobody in Europe wanted to see him, and that he didn't calculate to force himself on other people. I had supposed that this was nothing more than the Professor's natural shyness, but I accidentally found out that he had once written to Queen Victoria, telling her that he had an invention that would be just the thing she needed for making sure that no foreign enemy would land in England. He asked the Queen to drop him a line saying what day he could call on her and talk the matter over, but the Queen never answered his letter, and that made Van Wagener feel that he wasn't wanted in England.

"However, the Professor did make one voyage to Europe— that is to say, to the Mediterranean. He and I were both invited to go round the world in Major Ephraim D. Scroggins's yacht, and we both accepted the invitation. We sailed direct to Naples, and spent considerable time there. The yacht was a big, comfortable steamer, but Major Scroggins was always more or less sea-sick while he was on board of her. To tell the truth, he hated yachting as he hated a Sioux Indian, but being an American millionaire he wouldn't have been thoroughly respected unless he had done a little travelling in a yacht of his own. It's the same with all our millionaires. Any one of them would rather go to bed with the typhoid fever for a month than go on a yachting cruise, but public sentiment is too strong for them, and they have to go yachting, and to pretend that they like it. Major Scroggins didn't like Naples very much, believing as he did that Chicago was fifty times superior to it; but there was something in the smells that he struck in the narrow streets that seemed sort of homelike, and then he reflected the longer he stopped at the hotel in Naples, the less time he would have to spend on board the yacht.

"As for Van Wagener, he was delighted with Naples, principally on account of the volcano. He was up and down Vesuvius almost every day, and was nearly choked to death half-a-dozen times through trying to climb down into the crater. One day he came to the hotel where the Major was stopping, and where I happened to be taking a cocktail with him, and said in an excited sort of way: 'Gentlemen! I've got the biggest idea that I've struck yet, and if you'll furnish the capital we'll carry it out, and make ourselves famous for ever.'

" 'I'm about as famous as I want to be,' said the Major, 'but if you've got anything to say, go ahead and say it.'

" 'You admit,' says Van Wagener, 'that Vesuvius is the attraction that brings most people to Naples. They come here to see an eruption, and in nine cases out of ten the mountain don't erupt. Now if you and I owned that mountain, and could turn on an eruption whenever we pleased, we should have the biggest show on earth. We could make a uniform charge of a charge of a thousand dollars an eruption, and the municipality would pay it cheerfully, for they would get back their money ten times over out of the visitors that would come to Naples to see a genuine eruption. If ten thousand visitors come here every winter, knowing that their chance of seeing an eruption is about one in a hundred, how many do you think would come if they could be absolutely sure of an eruption every night, except Sundays, at nine o'clock to the minute? Why, sir! Vesuvius properly managed would draw at least half a million people every season, and if they were taxed a dollar a head, there would be half a million dollars to be shared by the municipality and the owners of the show.'

" 'That's all right enough,' said I, 'but I don't see how you are going to manage the mountain, and make it erupt or not erupt just as you please.'

" 'I've thought it all out,' said the Professor, 'and the thing is as easy as rolling off a log. What is it makes a volcano erupt? It's steam, sir! Steam! You look down the crater of a volcano that isn't erupting, and you'll see that the bottom is covered with a thick crust of hardened lava. That crust stays there, and keeps the mountain from erupting until she gets too big a head of steam on. When that happens the steam blows out the crust of lava, and then there is an eruption until the pressure is reduced. A volcano is nothing more or less than a big boiler without a safety valve, or any sort of an escape pipe. It's bound to burst at irregular intervals. Now if you provide a volcano with a safety valve, so that you can regulate the pressure, you can have an eruption whenever you please, or you can prevent any eruption from taking place. All you have to do is to watch the safety valve, and attend to it properly.'

" 'Your reasoning may be all right,' said I, 'but I don't see how you are going to fit a safety valve to Vesuvius. You'll find it a bigger job than it would be to fit an Æolian harp to a Bengal tiger.'

" 'When Vesuvius is quiet,' said Van Wagener, 'that crust that I spoke of is about a hundred feet from the top of the cone. I know this because I have read everything that has ever been written by any scientific observer concerning the mountain. Now, if you drive a gallery straight into the mountain at the foot of the cone, you will strike what an engineer would call the steam chest, at about five or six hundred feet below the crust. You make this gallery, say, six feet in diameter, and as long as it is open the steam will rush out and keep the mountain from erupting. That's my plan for keeping the mountain quiet when I don't want an eruption.'

" 'And how are you going to manage your eruptions?' I asked.

" 'That's another easy question,' said he. 'In order to make steam you require water, don't you? Well, I intend to have a big pumping engine that will throw a stream of water twenty-four inches in diameter into that gallery. When this water strikes the melted lava in the inside of the mountain it will be converted into steam, and as soon as the pres- sure gets up to the necessary point there will be an eruption. A few experiments will show just how much water will be required to produce a first-class eruption. When we know that, we will know just what time of day to begin pumping in order to have an eruption at nine o'clock p.m.'

"What Van Wagener said interested me. I knew he was one of the best scientific men living, and besides knowing all general science, he knew all there was to know about steam engines. I began to think there might be something in his scheme, and as I hadn't been doing anything except trying to amuse myself for more than six weeks, I was feeling pretty low spirited and knew that I needed to engage in some good speculation if I wanted to feel like myself once more. The Major felt the same way, and, after thinking the thing over for a few minutes, he said: 'I suppose we could buy Vesuvius for a song.'

" 'We don't need to buy anything but the cone,' replied the Professor; 'but I'll undertake to buy the whole mountain for a thousand dollars. By a rough calculation it will cost about ten thousand dollars to set up the proper machinery and bore the gallery. After that is done our expenses won't be worth mentioning. Besides, I have an idea that we can utilize the heat of the mountain and supply it to Naples in pipes. Naples could warm itself and do all its cooking with the heat that we would furnish, and you can see for yourself that there would be the biggest kind of a fortune to be got out of this single feature of my scheme.'

"Well, we talked about putting a safety valve into Vesuvius and going into business as the Vesuvius Exhibition and Heat Supplying Company, for the next week, Van Wagener getting more and more enthusiastic about it, and the Major and I gradually making up our minds to give the thing a trial. I was ready to go shares with the Major in furnishing the capital, but I saw perfectly well that it wouldn't do to go into the thing without experimenting first, and I knew that we couldn't conduct any experiments on Vesuvius without letting the public into the secret. Either we would make a failure and be laughed at, or we would succeed, in which case somebody would buy up Etna and start an opposition show that would be twice as big as ours, for Vesuvius isn't to be named in the same day with Etna. Finally I thought of a way out of the difficulty, and I proposed it to Van Wagener.

" 'You find,' said I, 'some big volcano situated in a place where there is nobody to watch our proceedings, except perhaps a lot of savages, and the Major and I will furnish the capital necessary for putting a safety valve into that volcano. If the experiment succeeds, then we'll come back to the Mediterranean, and buy up every volcano, active or extinct, that we can hear of. But I won't touch the thing until we have proved by experiment that it is practicable. I like a good speculation as well as anybody, but I won't throw money away.'

" 'I know the very volcano we want,' said the Professor ; 'it's called Krakatoa, and it stands all alone on an island somewhere near Java or Sumatra. If there's anybody on the island they'll be naked savages, and it won't matter what they think of our proceedings. Let's lay in a compressed-air boring machine and a pumping-engine and start for Krakatoa as soon as possible.'

"We all agreed to this proposal. I don't think the Major took much interest in Van Wagener's plan, but he calculated that the yacht would have to lie at anchor while Van Wagener was working at the mountain, and he was satisfied with anything that would keep the yacht quiet.

"We lay in the Bay of Naples about two months longer, waiting for our machinery, which we couldn't get short of England. Van Wagener was so full of his scheme that he gradually got me to believe in it almost as thoroughly as he did himself. If our experiments should turn out to be successful, and we could get the monopoly of all the volcanoes in Europe, there would be hardly any end to the things we could do. We could furnish heat and energy to every town in Europe, and could knock the coal-mining business higher than a kite. I had lost a little money in coal mines myself, and I rather liked the idea of freezing out the coal market. Of course, I didn't grudge the loss of the money, for a business man is bound to have his losses as well as his profits, and then again I knew that the British and French coal mines were not responsible for my losses in Pennsylvania mines. Still, we're only human after all, and I dare say that we all know what it is to want to get square with people when they get the better of us in trade.

"Well, the machinery arrived, and after a good deal of trouble on the part of the Major's chief engineer, who didn't understand what the machinery was wanted for, and was inclined to think that we were taking a liberty in putting any sort of machinery aboard the yacht without first consulting him, we got it stowed away. When we were ready to sail the sailing-master was ordered to take the yacht to Batavia, where we expected to get some information as to the whereabouts of Krakatoa, for it wasn't laid down on any chart, and all the sailing-master knew about it was that it was a volcano and was situated somewhere within five hundred miles of Java.

"Well, we got to Batavia in due time, and if you'll take my advice you'll never go there. It's just a Turkish bath, with fever and Dutchmen thrown in, and soap and shampooing left out. We found out the latitude and longitude of Krakatoa, and laid in thirty-eight Chinese coolies, and were thankful to get away from Batavia with our lives, though, as the doctor tells me, I left the greater part of my liver behind me.

"We made Krakatoa the third day after leaving Batavia. It was a tremendous big mountain, about five or six times as high as Vesuvius, and was situated on an island that, as far as we could see, was uninhabited, though I don't say that there might not have been people living on the north side of the island, for we didn't take the trouble to circumnavigate it. There were no signs of any activity about the volcano, which Van Wagener said was a proof that her fires were banked, and that she was in precisely the proper condition for our experiments.

"We didn't waste any time in getting the machinery ashore and setting it up, but the job took the best part of a week, for the reason that everything had to be carried ashore on the coolies' heads, and we could only land when the sea was quiet. According to Van Wagener's calculations his gallery would have to be about seven hundred feet long, in order to reach the centre of the cone. You see we didn't start it at the foot of the volcano, but about half way up the cone, at a place where there was a sort of terrace that gave us room for setting up the machinery. The gallery was six feet in diameter, and the boring machine had no difficulty in  cutting through the consolidated ashes and soft rock that formed the greater part of the mountain. We all lived aboard the yacht, and the coolies lived ashore in a tent. We worked twelve hours a day, for the Chinamen hadn't heard of the Eight Hour law, and their head man, who carried a big whip, kept them from being exhausted by the heat, or brought them to without much trouble whenever they fainted or fell down with a sunstroke, or tried to play any other game on him.

"The gallery sloped downward at an angle of about twenty-five degrees, so that when we should come to pumping water into it, the water would run down easily into the interior of the volcano. In about a month we had the gallery nearly finished, and Van Wagener calculated that with two days' more labour we could break through into the interior of the cone. He never said how he expected to protect the coolies from the steam that would rush into the gallery the moment an opening was made into the steam chest of the mountain, but as I knew he didn't like to be questioned about details, I let him take his own way without questioning him.

"We had gone on board the yacht for dinner, leaving the coolies at work, and were congratulating ourselves that the job was so nearly completed, when there was the noise of a tremendous explosion, followed by a rush of steam out of the mouth of the gallery. The steam hid everything from sight for a distance of, say, three hundred yards from the mouth of the gallery, but beyond that we could see the machinery and thirty-eight coolies sailing through the air at about the speed of a cannon- ball.

"At the rate they were going Van Wagener calculated that they would fetch up beyond the reach of the earth's attraction, and would keep on sailing through the universe like so many comets. I don't know whether he was right or not, but I never heard that the least particle of either machinery or coolies ever struck the earth again. We only had a glimpse of them for a second or two, and then they went out of sight, the same as a hawk does when it flies directly away from you at its best speed. So far as I could see, those Chinamen were bound straight for heaven, and they couldn't have been many minutes in reaching it.

"The steam continued to rush out of Van Wagener's safety valve without diminishing in quantity or force. If you were to get together all the steamers in the world, and set them all to blowing off steam at the same moment, and then multiply the roaring of the steam a hundred times, you'd begin to have some idea of the noise that Krakatoa made blowing off steam through the Professor's safety valve. On board the yacht we could only talk by signs, and we finally gave even that up, for the noise was so great that you couldn't even think. This lasted till one o'clock in the morning, when there came a crash that was louder than anything that was ever heard on this earth, before or since. It was a mercy that it didn't deafen every man of us for good and all. I have been told that it was heard a distance of fully a thousand miles, and I don't doubt it. To tell the truth I have never got fairly rid of that noise from that day to this, and it is always in my ears more or less, especially when I put my head on my pillow.

"What had happened was that Krakatoa had burst its boiler. You may perhaps know that if you have a heavy pressure of steam on a boiler, and you let the water get too low, the most dangerous thing you can do is to blow off steam. The moment that you reduce the pressure on the surface of the water the whole of it flashes into steam, and your boiler is blown into smithereens. Now Krakatoa had a good head of steam on, and her water must have been pretty low, for after she had blown off for five or six hours the pressure was so far reduced that all the water remaining in her rushed into steam and produced the biggest explosion on record. The upper half of the mountain was blown clean away, and the air was filled with stones and lava and ashes and hot water. Inside of five minutes the moon and the stars went out, and it was as black as midnight in Egypt in the time of old Pharaoh. In next to no time our deck was covered six inches deep with ashes and stones, and the sea was boiling worse than it does in the centre of a cyclone. We were in danger of being swamped through shipping a tremendous sea, as well as being buried under the weight of ashes, or sunk by a flying rock, or set on fire by red hot stones. The sailing master slipped his cable, and started up the engine just as quick as he could do it, and then we steamed away as fast as we could drive her towards the North. The channel wasn't an easy one in the daylight, and the sailing-master didn't even pretend that he could navigate it in the pitchy darkness. However, we were certain to lose the yacht and our lives if we stayed at our anchorage, and we couldn't do more than that by trying to run away. So we just took our chances, knowing at the time that they were mighty slim, and hoping that if we did wreck the yacht, it wouldn't be on a coast inhabited by cannibals.

"There never was such luck as we had that night, for we never once touched the bottom, though as we afterwards knew old islands were sinking, and new ones were being thrown up all around us. After the eruption was over, ships that passed that way found dry land in places where there had been a thousand fathoms of water, and sailed directly over places where there had been dry land and mountains. It was nearly ten o'clock the next day before we ran clear of the ashes, and came into open daylight. Then we found out where we were, and put the yacht on a course for Singapore.

"That is the way that the great eruption of Krakatoa was brought about, and what I should like to know is whether Van Wagener, and Major Scroggins, and I, were responsible for the thirty thousand or so heathens that are said to have been killed by it. Of course we never meant to hurt a living soul, and of course a heathen isn't anything like as valuable as a white man, and the penalty for killing him, if there is one, would be comparatively light.

"Still, the thought that I had a hand in killing all those heathens disturbs me at times. It never disturbed the Major, for the only thing that could ever disturb him would be a heavy fall in the stock market after he had bought for a rise. And as for Van Wagener, though he was one of the best and kindest of men, he always said that human life was nothing in comparison with science, and he didn't think the lives of thirty thousand heathen worth mentioning, considering that we had proved that a safety valve could be put into a volcano. However, he never had an opportunity for repeating his experiment, for the Major was so badly scared at the risk he had run of wrecking the yacht that he couldn't be induced to sail within a thousand miles of another volcano, and he wouldn't listen to any more proposals for regulating eruptions.

"We sailed straight from Singapore to San Francisco, where the yacht was sold, and we all came home by rail. Van Wagener never ceased to regret that we hadn't carried out our scheme of buying up Vesuvius, and he always said that some of these days some other scientific man would put a safety valve in some leading volcano, and reap the fame that by fair rights ought to belong to those who blew up Krakatoa."

***

10: The Fatal Fishing Line

"FISHING," remarked the Colonel, "is like learning a foreign language. The more brains a man has the more difficult it is for him to catch fish or to learn languages. You take a child and put him in a French school, and in six months he will speak French like a native, whereas the brainiest man in England might work at French for six years, and even then he would not speak it well. As for fishing, the best fisherman I ever knew was a half-witted darkey boy. He could catch more fish in an hour than any six of the leading citizens of New Berlinopolisville could catch in a day. There was my old friend and neighbour Professor Van Wagener. He was in some respects the ablest scientific man I ever met, but he never caught a fish in his life, except an occasional minnow. Now and then a trout would take his hook, but, the moment that trout was pulled far enough out of the water to see the man that had caught him, he would say to himself: 'Excuse me,' and he'd wriggle off that hook and go and hide himself under a rock for the rest of the day, as if he were ashamed of having paid any attention to Van Wagener's bait.

"Speaking of fishing reminds me of the electric fishing line fishing line that Professor Van Wagener invented. He and I had been fishing together one day, and neither of us had caught anything worth speaking of. On our way home Van Wagener says to me: 'The reason why we don't catch any fish is the grossly unscientific way in which we go about it. When a fish gets on my hook, I always lose him before I can get him out of the water. Now, if I had a metallic line, connected with a small battery, and could give the fish a shock the moment he took the hook in his mouth, I could land him without the least trouble.'

" 'Very likely you could,' said I. 'But where would be the sport of playing the fish?'

" 'I don't care anything for sport,' replied the Professor. When I go fishing I want to catch something, and I tell you right here that I'm going to invent an apparatus that will catch fish every time. You stick to your old apparatus and have all the sport you want. I'll have my electric fishing line, and catch every trout there is in the stream. If I was a betting man I wouldn't mind betting you that the first time I go fishing with my scientific apparatus, I'll make the biggest catch that has ever been known in the State of Illinois.'

"And so he did, though it wasn't just the sort of catch that he wanted to make.

"About a week later Van Wagener called me over to his house, which, as I told you before, was next door to mine, and showed me what he had done. He had a fishing rod with a long line fastened to it made of thin, flexible, braided wire. Instead of a reel he had a small battery attached to the rod, and by pressing a button with his thumb he could send a current through the line which would astonish any fish that it might happen to hit. I forgot to say that he had about half-a-dozen hooks fastened to his line, and he explained to me that if these hooks were baited properly, he would be sure of catching half-a-dozen trout at once. There was one thing about the apparatus which I couldn't help admiring. The line was flexible as a silk line, but it was about as strong as a ship's cable. Van Wagener showed me that you couldn't break it either as by pulling or twisting, and that it would turn the edge of any knife that you might try to cut it with. I knew well enough that his electric battery was all nonsense, but it did seem as if he had invented a first-class fishing line, though, of course, he couldn't appreciate its real merits.

"Van Wagener wanted me to go to the nearest trout stream with him and try the new apparatus, but I declined. I knew that he wouldn't succeed in catching any fish, and that he would naturally be disappointed, and express himself in scientific language that might not be so easy to bear. He was a good man, but when things went wrong with him he would use scientific terms in a way that was about four times as irritating as any ordinary unscientific cursing would have been. So I told him he had better try his apparatus alone, and that if it didn't happen to meet his expectations he could come to my house and free his mind after the thing was over. He didn't like it that I declined to go with him, and when he started out, with his rod on his shoulder and a big basket on his arm, he called to me that I needn't expect him to bring me any trout, for he intended to sell his whole catch to the fishmonger.

"The nearest place for trout fishing was a pool about two miles from where the Professor lived, and about half a mile from any house. I had told Van Wagener about this pool, for it was the place where I had once lost the biggest trout I ever hooked; but I hadn't told him that the pool was the property of Deacon Sammis, and that the Deacon wouldn't allow any man to fish there without paying for the privilege. It so happened that Deacon Sammis was away from home that day, and the Professor went to the trout pool and baited his hooks— for he never tried to fish with flies— and sat down on the bank, and started in to fish, without being interfered with. Mrs. Sammis, however, had seen him crossing the field with his rod and basket, and, being a woman who looked sharply after the family interests, she resolved to go down to the pool and tell the Professor that he must either pay or leave.

"Mrs. Sammis was a young woman, being the Deacon's third wife, and a remarkably good-looking woman. When she came behind the Professor and said: 'No trespassing allowed here, sir! You can't fish in this pool unless you pay five dollars first!' he looked up at her, and exclaimed: 'Bless my soul! What a pretty woman!' He didn't mean anything by it, having a sort of habit of talking out loud to himself, but it had its effect on Mrs. Sammis all the same. She knew who the Professor was, and was mightily pleased to be complimented by so distinguished a man. So she said: 'I didn't know it was you, Professor! Of course you're welcome to fish here as much as you please. My husband says there's no danger of your catching anything.' Then she asked Van Wagener what bait he was using; and, being glad of the opportunity to explain his new invention, he asked her to sit down beside him and see what really scientific trout-fishing would do.

"Mrs. Sammis was an intelligent woman, and she was a good deal interested in the electric fishing line. She drew pretty close to the Professor while he was explaining the battery to her, and she said that she did hope he would catch something, just to show how the battery would work. All of a sudden a big trout jumped clean out of the water. This excited Van Wagener, and he resolved to catch that trout then and there, so as to give Mrs. Sammis a convincing proof of the great merit of his apparatus. So he started to throw his line just over the place where the trout had jumped, making sure that the fish was waiting for him. Now, Van Wagener knew no more about casting a line than a baby knows. He swung the hooks over his head till they rested on the grass behind him, and then he tried to fling them back into the pool, with about as much judgment and delicacy as if he had been working with a flail. The result was that one hook caught Mrs. Sammis in the upper part of the right ear, and another caught the Professor in the nape of the neck, and there they were, fastened to one another by a bit of line about a foot long, that couldn't be cut except by the finest sort of steel file.

"Of course Mrs. Sammis gave a scream when the hook went into her ear; and what with that, and the pain in the back of his own neck, the Professor lost his presence of mind, and accidentally pressed the button of the battery. This brought another shriek from Mrs. Sammis, for there are few things more startling than a good smart electric shock. Next the Professor threw down the fishing-rod, and this gave a fresh twist to the hook, and led him to use a few scientific terms. It was foolish in him to try to break the line, knowing as he did that it was much too strong to be broken; but for all that he did try to break it, and in the process pulled at Mrs. Sammis's ear till she burst out crying, and begged him to let her die where she was. By this time he began to realise that he was in a mighty bad situation, but he grappled with it like the intelligent man he always was— that is, when he had had time to cool down a little.

"He took up the rod again very carefully, and succeeded in unfastening the line. Then he coiled the line up into a tight little ball, so that it couldn't trail on the ground or catch in anything. Meanwhile he was begging Mrs. Sammis to be calm, and assuring her that he would instantly take her to the doctor's and have the hook taken out of her ear. Mrs. Sammis cried a little longer, and then she stopped and said that the sooner they saw the doctor the better, and she did hope that the Deacon wouldn't get home until she and the Professor had been cut loose. You see the Deacon, though he was one of the best of men, was a little hasty in his temper, and two or three times he had shot a man in circumstances that really didn't call for any such energetic action, as he afterwards admitted himself.

"Well, the Professor and Mrs. Sammis set out for the doctor's, which was a good mile from the trout pool. The line that connected the two unfortunate people was so short that nearly every step they took it would stir up the hooks to fresh activity, and fetch fresh shrieks from Mrs. Sammis. Finally the Professor told her that she must allow him to put his arm around her waist, and that she must put her head on his shoulder. By this means they could walk without jerking the line. Mrs. Sammis at first wouldn't hear of any such plan, but after a few minutes the pain was too much for her, and she accepted the Professor's proposal. It must have been rather a pretty sight to see the two walking slowly across the field in such close proximity, and if I had been a younger man I don't know that I should have objected to take the Professor's place, fish-hooks and all.

"Before they were fairly out of the field the Deacon's first wife's mother, who lived with him, saw them out of her window, and called the servant girl to help her to pack up and leave the house where such an abandoned and shameless female lived. Mrs. Sammis knew of a sort of back path, by which she and the Professor could reach the doctor's office with- out taking to the main street; and of course they took this back path, not expecting to meet anybody. But you all know how it is. If you happen to be in a situation where you don't wish to be seen, all the friends and all the enemies you ever had will be sure to show up inside of twenty minutes. Why, I knew a young American man who wanted to have a quiet talk with a young American girl here in London. They had just arrived on the same steamer, and the girl's parents didn't like the young man, and wouldn't let the girl see him if they could help it. Well, he made an appointment with her to meet at St. Paul's Cathedral, calculating that if they went up into the ball nobody would see them except the guide, and they didn't care anything about him. Of course they had no sooner got up to the highest gallery than they met a party of nine Americans, who were old friends of the girl's, and were overjoyed to see her. They told her that they were going to call on her parents that very evening. It's my opinion that if the prophet Jonah had made an appointment to meet his best girl in the whale's cabin, he'd have found about a dozen friends leaning up against the ribs and waiting for him with bull's-eye lanthorns in their hands.

"However, I'm wandering from the subject.  What I intended to say was that just as soon as the Professor and Mrs. Sammis turned into the path they began to meet people, especially boys. The grown folks merely looked at them sadly and gave them a wide berth, so as not to contract any of their wickedness; but the boys generally hooted at them, and called the Professor names, and said they were going to tell Deacon Sammis. This was pretty hard to bear, but there was no help for it. The Professor wanted to stop and explain the state of things to everybody whom they met, but Mrs. Sammis wouldn't allow him to do anything of the sort. She told him he had better keep his breath until he should come to explain things to the Deacon, which she calculated he would find a middling tough job. In spite of the fact that she had her head on the Professor's shoulder and he had his arm around her waist, she was about as mad at him as a woman could be, and told him fifty times that he was the worst specimen of a chattering idiot that she had ever dreamed of.

"As for the Professor, he was just scientific enough to wonder why she made so much disturbance over so small a matter, and he hadn't the least idea that the Deacon would feel annoyed, even if he should happen to meet them on the way to the doctor's. So he walked on, talking about his new fishing apparatus, and trying his best to console Mrs. Sammis. When they reached the doctor's office the two hooks were extracted with very little difficulty, and the Professor went home and explained to his wife why he hadn't caught any trout.

"That was the beginning of the great scandal that divided all New Berlinopolisville into two parties— those who believed the Professor's story, and those who didn't. I am sorry to say that the latter was very much the larger party, and that Mrs. Van Wagener belonged to it. The Professor came over to my house that evening, and said that he rather thought he had better stay with me for a while, which accordingly he did. At times Mrs. Van Wagener would come to my door and say that she wanted to see that miserable man; but I never let her in, knowing that there would be trouble if I did. Similarly Deacon Sammis came one day with a big horsewhip, and demanded to see 'that scientific hound,' but I explained to him that if he wanted to interview anybody with a horsewhip, I was at his service, but that no hounds, scientific or otherwise, were to be found on my premises. Nothing came of it, for the Deacon hadn't brought his pistol with him and he never thought it worth while to call a second time. The Deacon's divorce suit was a failure, for the testimony of the doctor who had cut out the fish-hooks satisfied the jury, and they gave a verdict which entirely exonerated Mrs. Sammis and the Professor. But of course that had no effect so far as the public was concerned. People had made up their minds about the affair long before the suit came to be tried, and they didn't allow such a little thing as a verdict to influence them.

"It was so clear to me that the Professor's usefulness in New Berlinopolisville was gone that I induced him to accept a Professorship in Chicago that was offered to him while he was stopping at my house. at my house. What with Mrs. Van Wagener waiting to make it hot for him day and night, and what with the Deacon swearing to shoot him on sight, New Berlinopolisville didn't afford that quiet and seclusion which a scientific man needs, if he intends to do any valuable scientific work. The upshot of it all was that one night I drove the Professor out of town, and took him to a railway station where he took the train for Chicago. I wish he had given me that recipe for making his metallic fishing line. There would have been a lot of money in that invention if it had been properly handled."

***

11: The Professor's Jump

"I SAW a paragraph this morning," said the Colonel, "in the Daily Telephone, which I have been reading about once a year ever since I began to read newspapers. It was that standard old paragraph about the strength of a flea— the one which mentions that he can jump about seven hundred and thirty-two times his own length. I can't understand why that paragraph is so popular. What has the flea ever done for us that we should be for ever advertising him, and calling attention to his superiority in the matter of jumping? It just stimulates his ambition, and sets him to trying to break the record, which is so much the worse for us. However, that isn't what I started out to say."

The Colonel paused, and was evidently waiting for an invitation to pursue his theme, which we promptly gave him.

"You remember my old friend Professor Van Wagener," continued the Colonel. "I was talking with Van Wagener once about this very flea question, and he was mightily enthusiastic about it. He was an electrician by profession, but there is so much in common between fleas and electricity, that he naturally took a good deal of interest in the latter. He told me all the regulation paragraph says about the flea as an athlete, and a great deal besides; and when he had got through with his statements, some of which were tougher than anything I've ever seen in print, he went on to say what a shame it was that such an insignificant insect as a flea should be able to out-jump anything else, from men up to kangaroos.

"'It's your own fault. Professor,' said I. 'Why don't you call in the aid of science, and invent some way by which a man can jump seven hundred and thirty-two times his length, and so show the fleas that man is their superior?'

" 'That's a grand idea. Colonel,' says he, 'and I'll do it.'

" 'You haven't any doubt that you will succeed, have you?' said I, meaning to do a little sarcasm.

" 'Of course I haven't,' he replied. 'There are no limits to what science can do, and I think you'll admit that there are few men who can lay over me in the matter of inventing things.' Of course, I don't pretend to give his words exactly, but that was the gist of what he said.

" 'Yes,' says I, 'but now and then your inventions don't altogether seem to invent, as you might say. You remember your electric tricycle, and the difficulties that you got into through it.'

" 'Yes, yes,' said the Professor, 'I admit that it didn't turn out to be all that I, or rather Mrs. Van Wagener, could have desired, but for all that it was a good invention. Now I'm going to set to work to invent a way by which man can show his superiority to the flea, and if betting was not a grossly unscientific thing, I'd be willing to bet you that I will succeed.'

"Well, Van Wagener set to work, as he said he would, and he must have spent pretty much the whole of the next two months on that invention, for the greater part of that time he was both lame and black and blue, as any man who tries to jump in competition with a flea would naturally be. One day, however, he came to me and said: 'Colonel, you remember our conversation about fleas? Well, I have kept my promise about that invention, and have got things into such shape that I can jump nine hundred and fifty times my own length, and at least forty times my own height'

" 'Oh, I don't doubt your word, Professor,' said I, 'but, as you know, seeing is believing, that is to say, with us chaps that don't go in for science. Now with you scientific fellows it's different. You don't believe anything you see, and you do believe most anything that neither you nor anybody else can see.'

" 'That's all right,' says he. 'You shall see what my new invention can do, and if you like you shall jump nine hundred and fifty times your own length. You may not like the sensation at first, but you will get used to it after a while, that is, if you don't meet with any serious accident.'

" 'When do you propose to exhibit this invention?' said I.

" 'I'll exhibit it in any quiet place, where nobody but you and I are present, just as soon as you please.'

" 'Very well,' said I; 'this afternoon I shan't have anything in particular to do, and we can go down to Deacon McFadden's pasture where nobody will see us except the crows, and there you can jump till every flea in New Berlinpolisville, that hears about it, will wish that he had never been born. But hadn't we better get Doctor Sabin to come along with a supply of liniment and things for setting broken legs and such? They might come in very handy.'

" 'Colonel,' says he, 'you're a mighty nice man in your way, but you don't know the resources of science. My invention is complete without any medical attachment, and we will dispense with Dr. Sabin's presence, if you please.'

"Well, about two o'clock that afternoon the Professor calls for me with a big bundle under his arm, and a fishing-pole in his hand. He said that people might think it a little strange to see him going down to Deacon McFadden's pasture with me, but if they supposed that we were going fishing it would allay all suspicion, and nobody would think of following us. There was no water within five miles of the pasture, but that didn't strike the Professor as any reason why we should not pretend that we were going there on a fishing excursion. That's always the way with scientific men. The minute they attempt to reason without a slate and pencil they are no sort of good. To see a man going into McFadden's pasture with a fishing-rod on his shoulder would have been the very thing to induce every man or boy who saw him to follow after him. Luckily no one happened to meet us, and before long we were in the pasture, and the Professor leaned his fishing-pole up against the fence, and proceeded to get his invention into working order.

"This wonderful invention consisted of four steel springs, that were tremendously powerful. Van Wagener's idea was to fasten a spring on the palm of each hand, and on the bottom of each foot. Then he meant to stand on the top of the fence, or of some middling high rock, and take a big jump, landing on all fours. The springs were expected to get in their work the moment the Professor should strike the ground, and, after giving him a boost that would throw him nine hundred and, fifty times his length, the springs would be compressed automatically, by the weight of the Professor and the force of his contact with the ground, and so would start him on a fresh jump. He explained all this to me while he was fastening his springs in position, and admitted that what he had said about being able to jump over nine hundred feet wasn't quite true as yet. 'According to my calculations,' said he, 'I can make and wear springs that will enable me to jump nearly a thousand feet, but in order to do it safely more practice would be required than I have had time to indulge in. I am satisfied that the principle of my invention is all right, but for the present I content myself with springs that will carry me about fifty feet. They will do very well to illustrate the nature of the invention, and I promise you, that just as soon as I can make a set of springs of a thousand-feet jumping power, you shall be the first to use them.'

" 'You're very kind, I'm sure,' said I, 'but I'm not in any hurry to convert myself into a flea. That's a queer idea. of yours,' I continued, 'to fasten springs on your hands as well as your feet. Do you want to make a quadruped of yourself!'

" 'To tell the truth,' said the Professor, 'I tried at first to jump with springs on my feet only, but I couldn't manage to keep right side up. You may notice that I am a little bruised. That came from using only one pair of springs. I found that whenever I jumped with them I landed on my head or on my back, and after trying the thing for a dozen times with the same result, I saw that it wouldn't do. The flea, you will take notice, does his jumping feats with all his legs at once, and it is only reasonable that if we wish to rival him in his own line we should make up for our deficiency in point of legs by using our hands.'

"I admitted that the Professor was logical in his remarks, but my faith in his invention was beginning to be a little shaken. When a man has got to reduce himself to a quadruped before he can accomplish what he sets out to do, it doesn't seem to me that the game is worth the candle. However, the Professor was a mighty clever man, and a truthful one, so far as his devotion to science would allow him to be. So I had no doubt that he would be able to jump a distance of fifty feet, and do it in a way that wouldn't be disastrous to his legs and trousers.

"Van Wagener got his springs into position, after a good deal of trouble, and then I helped him to climb up on the top of the fence, which was an old-fashioned rail fence, about ten feet high. He found it wasn't an easy job to balance himself on the top rail, but he was a mighty persevering man, and he stuck to it, till he was able to stand upright, with the help of a hop-pole that I found for him. Then, when all was ready, he told me to stand aside, and made his jump.

"He landed on his feet, and the minute he struck the ground the springs flung him about ten feet into the air. They didn't however, send him forward to any great extent, and he came down on his head only a foot or two in front of the place from which he had started. I picked him up, and when he had got the mud out of his mouth, and found that his neck wasn't broken, he was as cheerful as ever, saying that he had made a slight mistake in his way of jumping, but that he would try it again, and show me what he could do. This time, when he jumped from the fence, he lit on all fours, and then sailed away, skimming over the ground and keeping about four feet above it, until he had covered a good thirty feet. Then he lit again, and this time the springs lost a good deal of their power, for his next jump wasn't more than twenty feet in length. He made another little mistake this time, for in doing those twenty feet he somehow turned over, and finally struck the ground on his back, and as there wasn't any spring in it he stopped where he was, and waited for me to help him up. He wasn't hurt, you understand, but he was a little discouraged, for the tail of his coat had got twisted around his head, and for a few minutes he didn't precisely know where he was.

" 'Seems to me,' I began to remark. But Van Wagener interrupted me in a way that showed that his temper was getting a little ruffled. 'I don't care how it seems to you, Colonel!' he said. 'You're not a scientific man, and you can't appreciate the difficulties which a pioneer in a new scientific path has to overcome. Wait till I get those springs tightened up a bit, and you'll see that I can do fifty feet with ease and safety.'

"Well! the Professor went to work again, and wound up his springs with a monkey wrench, and then he limped back to the fence and made ready for a fresh start. I wanted to warn him that his bones weren't warranted to stand his jumping experiments with impunity, but there would have been no use in trying to influence him. So I let him alone, resolving, at the same time, that if he did break his neck, I would leave town in a hurry, and let some one else carry the news to Mrs. Van Wagener, who was one of those unreasonable women who are always blaming their husbands' friends for their husbands' faults.

"The Professor made a tremendous effort this time, and landed fifteen feet in front of the fence, with a headway that gave the springs a chance to show just what they were worth. They sent him soaring along for a distance that I calculated, by carefully pacing it, was a little over fifty feet. The Professor continued on in a series of most successful jumps, each one of which was about ten feet shorter than the previous one, for, of course, the springs couldn't do a uniform rate of work, for, if they had done it, they would have solved the problem of perpetual motion. I followed after Van Wagener at a run, but I couldn't keep up with him. There were some pretty bad places in the pasture, and I was afraid that my old friend would come to grief. However, he skimmed clean over a bush that stood in the middle of the pasture, and by the time I had run around it he was a long way ahead of me, and heading straight for a stone wall. I suppose he calculated to jump over the wall, or, perhaps, he was so much occupied with keeping himself right side up, that he didn't notice the obstacle. Anyway, he sailed on, and just in the middle of his seventh jump he struck the wall good and fair with the top of his head, and lay on the grass completely insensible, when I reached him.

"Now this stone wall was at one end of the pasture, and the high road was just the other side of it. I had noticed that three or four people were standing in the road, watching the Professor as he came along through the air, with his arms and legs and coat-tails stretched out, and looking for all the world like a new style of spider; but I hadn't noticed, until I was close to the wall, that one of these persons was Mrs. Van Wagener. I knew well enough that she must have recognised her husband, for there was nobody else in New Berlinopolisville who would have made that sort of a spectacle of himself, and I foresaw that things would be made pretty lively for me.

"I turned the Professor over on his back, and felt his neck and head, to find if he had sustained any serious breakage. Finding that his damages were only skin-deep, I loosened his collar, and poured a little whiskey down his throat, and brought him round all right by the time that Mrs. Van Wagener had contrived to climb over the wall. I'll admit that he wasn't a very soothing spectacle to an affectionate wife, for he was covered with blood and dirt, and his clothes were mostly rags. Still, it wasn't my fault, as far as I could see, and Mrs. Van Wagener ought to have been thankful that I was on hand with my whiskey flask to bring him round. But there! what is the use of expecting a woman to be reasonable? As soon as Mrs. Van Wagener saw that the Professor was alive, she just cast off her tongue lashings and went for me in her best style. The poor Professor was too dazed to say anything, and, of course, I wasn't going to contradict a lady; but when I had helped to hoist the Professor over the stone wall, and into a waggon that happened to come along just then, I did tell her that if her husband chose to transform himself into a flea, and could thereby be able to hop about fifty thousand miles away from her, no sensible man could possibly blame him. Then I went back home cross-lots, and it was a fortnight before the Professor was able to get out of his room.

"He never found those springs again, and he never dared to make another pair, for Mrs. Van Wagener warned him that if he ever tried to jump again she would apply for a divorce the very next day. Well! he was a mighty ingenious man, and I'm not sure that if he had been allowed to work out that invention, and hadn't killed himself while working it out, it might not have superseded the bicycle in time. As for me, I'm contented with my own legs. They may not be handsome, but they suit me well enough, and I don't propose to fit myself up with any wheel or spring attachment that any one may invent."

__________________

12: The Amphibious Torpedo

"ABOUT A YEAR after Professor Van Wagener went to Chicago to live, he sent me a telegram, begging me to come and see him the next day on most important business. Not having anything else to do, I took the next train and went to Chicago, suspecting that Van Wagener had been making some new invention, and that he wanted to get my opinion as to its merits. He met me at the station, and drove me out to his house, which was situated on the shore of the lake about two miles from town. I found him full of what he maintained was the greatest invention of the century. It seems that he had thought out a new kind of torpedo, which, according to him, was destined to revolutionise warfare, both on land and at sea.

"I let him talk, but of course I didn't take much stock in his invention. I had known him to devise too many things, every one of which was going to be the greatest creation of the century, but none of which ever did anything except to get him into trouble. However, he was a mighty learned and ingenious man, and such men do sometimes produce something useful, though, of course, it is very seldom that their inventions work.

"Van Wagener's 'Amphibious Torpedo,' as he called it, was finished, and all was ready for a trial trip, and that very night Van Wagener made me go with him into his barn where he had the thing stored, and examine it. It was shaped like the ordinary fish torpedo, and was made of sheet iron, and, as I should judge, was about twenty feet long. It was fitted with four wheels, which were constructed in such a way that they would act as paddle-wheels in the water, and waggon wheels on land. Inside of the torpedo there was a whole lot of electrical machinery which was to propel the thing, and there was also a chamber meant to hold eight hundred pounds of dynamite, which would explode whenever the nose of the torpedo should strike anything.

"Van Wagener said that it was a self-steering concern, and could be depended upon to start out and find a vessel at a distance of two miles, and blow it into smithereens. It would be equally useful, so he said, on land, for it could  be set in motion on the battle-field, and would go straight into the midst of the enemy, and blow three or four regiments into the air. Also, he maintained that it would be invaluable in attacking a fort, for it would travel across the country, explode its charge against the wall of the fort, and so do more damage than a whole battery of guns could do.

" 'Just think,' said Van Wagener, 'of the superiority of a self-propelling torpedo to a cannon that has to be dragged by horses! An army provided with my invention will march along by the side of its torpedoes without lifting a finger to drag them. One torpedo will do the work of twenty cannon, and will need only one man to manage it, instead of a dozen gunners, and half-a-dozen horses. Colonel, this amphibious torpedo is going to make a greater revolution in warfare than was made by the invention of gunpowder. Where a cannon shot kills one man my torpedo will kill a hundred!'— and the Professor, who is the most amiable and soft-hearted old chap that ever lived, smiled a heavenly sort of a smile at the thought of having invented a machine that would massacre soldiers by the hundred.

"Early the next morning Van Wagener had me and the torpedo out on the road, which ran I tell you, in a straight line from his house for two or three miles in each direction. It was a lonesome sort of a road, and he could feel pretty sure that nobody would come along at that hour to interfere with the trial of his torpedo. He pointed it westward, and set the machinery in motion, giving it only electricity enough to last for ten minutes. The thing started down the road at the rate of about ten miles an hour, and Van Wagener and I ran after it, and alongside of it, while he lectured on its various merits. About fifty rods down the road he had planted his big farm waggon filled full of stones, and he calculated that this would stop his torpedo. So it did, when the torpedo struck it; but, considered as a waggon, it wasn't of much value after the torpedo had got through with it. Of course there wasn't any dynamite in the machine, but being made of iron and filled chock full of machinery, it weighed several tons, and when it struck the waggon it made firewood of all except one of the front wheels.

"The electricity being by this time exhausted, the torpedo ceased to move. The Professor and I set to work and cleared away the remains of the waggon, and then Van Wagener drove the torpedo back to the house, where he loaded it with the full charge of eight hundred pounds of dynamite. Then we took it down to the beach, and pointed it at a canal boat that the Professor had anchored a mile or so from the shore. The moment the machinery was started, the torpedo marched down the beach into the water, and made a straight line for the canal boat.

" 'Isn't that magnificent ?' said Van Wagener. 'Doesn't that torpedo seem to be an intelligent being? In about five minutes she will strike the canal boat, and then you'll judge what would happen if she were to collide with a man-of-war.'

"Just at that moment the torpedo made a sudden sheer to the right, and headed directly for an excursion steamboat that had come into sight around the east point of the bay.

"The Professor turned as pale as a white-washed mission house.

" 'Seems to me,' said I, 'that your machine is a little too intelligent. She's seen that excursion boat, and wants to show you what she can do in the way of blowing up human beings.'

" 'It's the steering gear that has got out of order,' said Van Wagener; 'I can't see how it happened, but we must hope that the steam- boat won't be hit.'

" 'If it is,' said I, you and I will have to leave these parts in a hurry. The general public doesn't care much for science anyway, and when science takes to blowing up an excursion steamboat with five or six hundred passengers, the public will have a worse opinion of science than ever.'

" 'There, it's all right!' exclaimed the Professor. 'The torpedo is turning round, and coming back this way. I'll just remedy the trouble with the steering gear, and then we'll continue our experiments.'

"I was glad to find that the steamboat had escaped, but I didn't like the idea of having that loaded torpedo come ashore in my neighbourhood. However, I couldn't well desert my old friend, and he insisted that there wouldn't be the least bit of danger.

"The moment the torpedo struck the beach its wheels took hold of the sand, and it came towards us at a pretty brisk pace. It was only then that it seemed to dawn on the Professor's mind that he couldn't stop the machinery while the torpedo was in motion, for in order to do so he had to open a door in the side of the torpedo, just between the front and the hind wheels.

"I sang out to him that if he didn't stop the thing it would run into his house, and blow it and Mrs. Van Wagener sky-high ; but he said that he couldn't possibly stop it, and that the only thing we could do would be to turn it out of its course.

"I didn't like the job of meddling with a loaded torpedo, but there was no help for it, and so the Professor and I caught hold of the stern of the machine, and dragged it round so that it would clear the house, and point up the road towards Chicago.

"We succeeded in doing this because the torpedo moved rather slowly while it was climbing up the sandy beach, but just as soon as it struck the road, it rattled on at its usual rate of ten miles an hour, and Van Wagener and I followed it at a respectful distance.

" 'It's my opinion,' said I, 'that there's going to be trouble with that torpedo before we get through with it. How long will it keep up its present gait?'

" 'About three-quarters of an hour longer!' said Van Wagener.

" 'That will bring it into the crowded part of Chicago,' said I; 'that is, if it keeps straight down the road, and doesn't happen to meet anything. There's a team coming now! I think we'd better not wait to see the catastrophe. The first train for Canada is what we want.'

"Van Wagener wouldn't hear of running away, so we waited to see the torpedo strike the team, which there was every prospect that it would do. But, as it happened, the driver had the sense to pull over to one side of the road, and the torpedo went by him without doing any harm. Van Wagener sat down on a stone by the side of the road, and I thought, at first, that he was going to faint.

"I gave him my whisky flask, and he pulled himself together, and started after the torpedo again.

"I waited for a moment to answer the question of the driver of the team, who wanted to know if I had seen a thundering big alligator on wheels going down the road. I assured him that I had seen nothing of the kind, and he drove on his way, remarking that he would sign the temperance pledge the moment he got back to Chicago. Then I started to overtake the Professor, but it wasn't long before I met him coming back at full speed with the amphibious torpedo in chase of him.

" 'I managed to turn it round,' he gasped, 'but I can't stop it, and I'm afraid it will overtake that team that has just passed us.'

"I knew that if it did, there wasn't any sort of a chance that the team would escape a second time, so I went up the road as fast as I could run, intending to warn the driver to get out of the way. To my horror I found the team standing in the middle of the road, and though I yelled to the driver, I didn't seem to attract his attention. The torpedo was heading straight for the waggon, and when I saw that it was too late for the driver to try to turn out, even if he heard me, I stopped and waited to see the result.

"The torpedo struck the waggon fair and square, and there was a noise as if a whole powder mill had blown up. When the smoke and dust cleared away, there was not the smallest fragment of waggon or torpedo to be seen— nothing except a hole in the ground, about as big as the cellar of a house.

"Van Wagener came up and stood looking in the hole with me; and then he said:  'I don't suppose there is any hope that the driver escaped.'

" 'Never you mind about the driver,' said I. There isn't a piece of him left that is as big as a nutmeg, and it's lucky for us that there isn't. We will have plenty of time to get across the border into Canada before anybody finds out what has happened!'

" 'I never dreamed of killing anybody,' said the Professor in a mighty mournful voice.

" 'I did think,' I replied, 'that I heard you boasting that your torpedo would kill people by the hundred, but perhaps I was mistaken. Anyhow, we won't argue the question just now.'

" 'I don't want to run away like a criminal,' said Van Wagener.

" 'Come to think of it,' said I, we needn't do anything of the kind. They can't accuse us of murder till they find the corpse of the murdered man,, and they can't do that, even if they hunt for it with microscopes. Hullo ! Here's a man coming. I hope he won't prove to be a witness.'

"I was never more astonished in my life than I was when the man came up to us, and proved to be the teamster, alive, and well, except that he had a rather scared expression of face.

" 'Might you gentlemen have heard a big noise just now?' he asked in a timid sort of a way.

" 'Noise !' said I. "I haven't noticed any noise.'

" 'I thought that was about the way of it,' says the man. 'And you haven't seen no alligator on wheels, or no waggon with two bay horses, and you don't happen to see no big hole in the road just in front of us ?'

" 'My friend,' said I, 'you'd better knock off whisky for good and all, and march straight into the nearest hospital.'

" 'Thank you, sir,' said he, 'I've had 'em before, but never so bad as now. I thought I was driving a team, and was chased by a four- wheeled alligator ; and while I went down to the lake to get a drink of water— which I'm going to drink nothing else after this— I thought I heard the biggest kind of a thunder clap. But I see now that it was all a collusion, as the doctors say, and I'll just lie up in hospital till things come straight again.' So saying, he set off up the road towards Chicago, and I marched the Professor back to his house, having hard work to persuade him that it wasn't his duty to pay the man for his horses and waggon, then and there.

" 'He'll find out soon enough,' said I, that he hasn't been dreaming ; but by that time I'll have seen a lawyer, and arranged to settle for the damage the torpedo has done, without getting your name into print. You go and take something to calm your nerves, and I'll put up a sign-board warning people that there's a big hole in the road.'

" 'It would have been a great success if the steering gear hadn't got out of order,' said Van Wagener, brightening up a little.

" 'Yes!' said I. 'If it had hit the excursion steamboat, and killed, say five hundred people, or if it had blown up the teamster as well as his team, or if it had run into your house and blown up Mrs. Van Wagener, there isn't the least doubt that it would have been a success. But you can't afford to invent successful torpedoes. What you want to invent is a machine for keeping yourself out of mischief. It's the opinion of all your friends that there's a great demand for such a machine, and if you don't invent it yourself, the chances are that the police will do it for you.'

"Van Wagener was a teachable man, I will say that for him. He never took the least offence at what I said, and he never so much as breathed the word torpedo again."

***

13: The Floating Magnet

"PROFESSOR VAN WAGENER used to bring out about one invention a year. You see, it took him about six months to invent something and bring it to perfection, and then it took him another six months to recover from the disappointment and other injuries resulting from the first trial of the invention.

"It was just about six months after the Professor had invented his amphibious torpedo that he wrote to me, asking me to come to Chicago to see the trial of a new man-of-war that he had invented, and that was destined to make a revolution in naval warfare. That was always the sort of way he talked about his inventions before he brought them out. They were always going to make a to make a revolution in something, and if they had succeeded he would have beaten the French out of sight with revolutions, and pretty nearly equalled some of the South American republics. Of  course, this sort of scientific bragging never imposed on me, but I was always ready to do any little thing to gratify the Professor that was in my power, and so I went to Chicago, and drove up to the Professor's cottage alongside of the lake a little late the same evening.

"Van Wagener had been wanting to invent an improvement on ironclad men-of-war for a long time, and once or twice he thought he had hit on the right idea. He came to me one day when we were both living in New Berlinopolisville, and said:

" 'Colonel! I've got the grandest idea for a man-of-war that was ever yet thought of. It's going to revolutionise shipbuilding " This scheme of building big iron ships and then plating them with armour three feet thick is all wrong,' said the Professor. 'What you get by this process is an enormously big and enormously expensive ship, but she can be sunk with a single shell or by a single torpedo. Besides, she is liable to run ashore, and when she does she is so tremendously heavy that you can hardly ever hope to get her afloat again. It's all very well to talk about the defensive armour, and its ability to keep shell out. The armour is so heavy that you can only use it here and there, and a shell will go through the unarmoured parts of the vessel just as easy as if there was no armour about her. No, sir ! The ironclad won't do. She is a delusion and a snare, and a mighty expensive snare, too.'

" 'So far you're talking good sense,' said I; 'but go ahead, Professor, and tell me what the man-of-war of the future is to be.'

" 'She is to be built of caoutchouc,' he replied.

" 'Of which?' said I. 'Please remember, Professor, that I don't speak French.'

" 'Perhaps you'll understand me better if I say she is to be built of indiarubber. It is tough and it's light, and it's practically indestructible.'

" 'Seems to me,' said I, that indiarubber won't keep out shot and shell.'

" 'No more it won't, and that's one of the merits of it. Instead of trying to make ships impervious to shot, which can never be done, we should try to build them in such a way that shot could pass through them without doing them any material injury. Now, suppose you have a ship covered with slabs of indiarubber a foot thick. A shot would pass right through such a ship, but the hole in the rubber would instantly close of its own accord, and the ship would be as tight as ever.'

" 'How about the men and the machinery?' I asked. 'Don't you intend to give them any protection? They won't close up when a shot goes through them.'

" 'There will be a belt of armour all around the engine-room, which will make the machinery pretty safe. As for the men, they can all go down in the hold when the enemy begins to fire, and their chances of being hit will be mighty slim.

"I didn't ask the Professor how the crew of his ship were to fight the guns if they were stowed away in the hold, nor how the ship was to be of any use as a man-of-war if she was not to do any fighting. Van Wagener was so full of his project that I didn't have the heart to say much against it just then.

" 'There is another advantage that my ship will have,' continued the Professor. If she runs on a reef she won't stick there and go to pieces like the unscientific ships that we build nowadays. She will be so elastic that when she hits a reef she will bound back fifty feet or so, and never sustain the slightest damage. The same thing will happen when she is run into by another vessel, which will naturally happen when she is called upon to take part in naval manoeuvres. Instead of having a big hole knocked in her, and consequently going to the bottom like a lump of lead, she will bound away from the vessel that runs into her, and neither will be in the least degree injured. I tell you, Colonel, this is the invention of the age, and I'm going to Washington next week to see the Navy Department about it, and to ask for an appropriation to build an indiarubber ship of ten thousand tons.'

"I advised the Professor by all means to go to Washington, and finally he went. I don't know what the Secretary of the Navy said to him, but I do know that after he returned I heard no more about his indiarubber man-of-war; he assured me that popular government was a terrible failure, and that the men who held important offices at Washington were a disgrace to an age of science. Another scheme of the Professor's was an ironclad that could not possibly be pierced by any projectile. For a time he was full of this invention, and used to come over to my house and talk it over with me. At least, he did the talking, and I did the listening, which is a sort of division of labour that pleases most folks.

"Van Wagener said that the Monitor system was the true one for building ironclads, but that the inventor of that system had not carried it out properly. Instead of putting the guns in an iron turret three feet thick, Van Wagener proposed to make his turret of solid iron all the way through, and mount his guns on top of it. Said he:

" 'Either the present style of turret won't keep out the shot, which I am told it won't do unless it is made fully six feet thick, or else it will jam and refuse to turn, and so render the guns useless. Besides, it has been proved that the junction of the turret with the deck can never be made water-tight, so that a turret ship will always leak in bad weather, and is pretty certain to drown her crew. Now, there never was a gun made that could send a shot through a solid turret of, say twenty-five feet in diameter. Moreover, such a turret would not have to be revolved in order to aim the guns, and consequently there would be no joint to leak. The more you look into this scheme, Colonel, the more you'll see that it is bound to work a revolution in naval warfare.'

" 'But I don't see that your solid turret is going to protect anything,' said I.

" 'That's very true,' said Van Wagener, 'but neither will the hollow turret that is now in use.'

"I don't say that your invention isn't a mighty ingenious one,' said I, but what I can't understand is why you should put a solid turret, weighing some thousands of tons, on board a ship, if that turret isn't to be of the slightest use.'

"If you'll believe it, that idea had never occurred to the Professor. This time, however, it hit him fair and square, and I never heard him mention his solid turret scheme again.

"I reached Van Wagener's house about supper time, and seeing that I was tired and hungry he never said a word about his new invention until I had settled down to my after-supper pipe. I knew, however, that he was bursting with anxiety to tell me about it, so just as soon as I felt able to stand it, I asked him what his new invention was.

" 'It's something that even you can't pick any flaw in,' said the Professor.

" 'You'll admit, I think, that all modern men-of-war are built of iron?'

" 'Of course, I admitted this, for at that time nobody thought of building steel vessels.

" 'Very well!' continued Van Wagener. 'Now my invention is this: I build a flat- bottomed, light draught vessel of, say, five thousand tons, and I place all around this vessel, from stem to stern, a wire cable of about a foot in diameter. Then I put a powerful dynamo, or, if you please, half a dozen dynamos in the hold. When I have got a good stock of electricity stored up, I pass within a mile of the enemy's fleet and send a current of electricity through my wire cable. This will instantly convert the whole ship into an electro magnet, and the enemy's ships, being made of iron, will be irresistibly attracted by the magnet, and will follow after my vessel no matter what efforts may be made to prevent it. When I see that I have, as you may say, got all the enemy's fleet in tow, I just steer for shallow water. My vessel being flat-bottomed, will pass over the shallow places, but the enemy's vessels will run hard aground, and will then be captured with ease. What do you think of that for an invention ?'

" 'I think it does you credit, Professor,' said I. Still I should like to know what is to prevent the enemy from firing on your vessel, and either sinking her or killing her crew.

" 'In the first place she will be half full of cork, so that nothing will be able to sink her, and in the second place there will be only three or four men on board of her. You see, my vessel will not be armed, and consequently all the crew she will require will be a single quartermaster to steer her, an engineer, an electrician, and two or three stokers. My idea is to avoid the frightful loss of life that a naval battle must cost when your ships are crowded with men.

With my magnetic ship I shall be able to run an entire fleet of vessels aground without the possibility of losing more than half-a-dozen men. What other objection have you got to make?'

" 'It seems to me,' said I, that your magnetic ship will be of no use on the high seas, since it is only meant to induce the enemy's vessels to run ashore. If the enemy keeps a good distance from the land your vessel won't be able to do any injury.'

" 'I thought you would say that,' replied Van Wagener, and I've got the answer all ready. Suppose I find the enemy's ships a hundred miles from land, and steam up to within half a mile of them. What will happen?'

" 'You and your vessel will be captured.'

" 'Not at all. As soon as the enemy's ships begin to feel the attraction of my magnet I shall launch a wooden boat, and I and all my crew will row away. Meanwhile all the hostile vessels will be irresistibly attracted to the same point, and will finally run into one another, and the whole of them will go to the bottom, while our side will lose nothing except, perhaps, a deserted magnetic ship. I rather think that disposes of your objection, Colonel?'

"I let my old friend think that he had floored me, and then next morning he and I went down to the lake where he was to make a practical test of his invention. He had a small iron steam launch lying at the wharf, and he had fitted her up as a floating electro magnet. About half a mile from the shore there was another steam launch lying at anchor, which was to represent the enemy's fleet. There were only two men on board this other launch, and Van Wagener explained that at a given signal they would get up the anchor and let the vessel drift.

" 'It won't be worth while,' said he, 'for them to get up steam, for all I want to do this morning is to demonstrate the attractive power of my magnet, and if I do that you can take my word for it that the launch wouldn't be able to steam away, no matter what pressure she might have on her boiler. Besides, she hasn't any machinery in her at present.'

" 'That's a good enough reason for not get ting up steam,' said I. 'Some people would have mentioned it at first, but you scientific chaps have your own ways of putting things.'

"It was arranged that Van Wagener was to go on board his floating magnet and take her out a quarter of a mile from the shore, while I stood on the wharf and watched the performance. I calculated that this would be quite as satisfactory and a great deal safer than it would be for me to watch it from the deck of the launch. Van Wagener was perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, though he did say that he was sorry that I showed so little confidence in science and scientific men.

"Well, the Professor got up steam, and then he and his engineer and his quartermaster took the launch out into the lake till it was about half-way between the shore and the enemy's launch. Van Wagener backed water, and brought his vessel to a standstill, and then he shouted to me that he was about to turn on the electricity. In another minute I saw him and the quartermaster drop down on the deck and lie as if they were dead. Then the enemy's launch pulled up its anchor and began to drift down towards Van Wagener's launch, increasing its pace regularly and rapidly, till I saw that a collision was certain to take place.

"Now, what had happened was this. When Van Wagener turned on his electricity he and his quartermaster had omitted to take any measures to insulate themselves, and consequently they were knocked senseless, just as if they had been struck by lightning. I did not know whether they had been killed or merely stunned, but I reckoned that the only thing that would do them much good would be the sudden shock of going overboard, and so I let the other launch go on its way, calculating that it would run into Van Wagener's launch and spill everybody into the lake. In order to be ready for this I called a couple of boatmen, and we rowed out towards the floating magnet, which we reached just as the enemy's launch ran into it, keeled it over, and sunk it like a shot; Van Wagener and his crew coming to the surface like corks, owing to having lost their senses, and so being unable to struggle and drown themselves.

"We fished the three men out and pulled them ashore. By the time we had reached the wharf the quartermaster and the engineer had come to enough to shake their fists at Van Wagener and free their minds in regard to his invention; but he being a weak and sickly sort of chap did not recover his senses until after we had carried him home and worked over him some considerable time. When he came to and found out where he was, he asked in a feeble sort of way how his experiment had turned out. Mrs. Van Wagener was so overjoyed to find that he wasn't dead that she wiped her eyes and then started in to give him a piece of her mind.

" 'It's turned out, Mr. Van Wagener,' said she, speaking very stern and cold, 'just as any fool might have known it would, and I want you to understand that from this time forth there is going to be an end of inventions in my house. You invent one more— I don't care what it is and to the lunatic asylum you'll go. I've said it, and I mean it. This business of having you half killed once or twice a year, and then having you come to life again, has got to be stopped. It's more than any wife can endure, and the Colonel here will tell you the same, if he's got any sort of Christian feelings left in him.'

"Van Wagener was a docile sort of chap, and when he knew that his wife had made up her mind to anything, he never thought of disobeying her openly. From that day to this he never spoke to man or beast of his floating magnet, and it was pretty near two years before he mustered up courage to make a new invention, and that was nothing more dangerous than a new electric mouse-trap."

***

14: Van Wagener's Clocks

"IS PROFESSOR Van Wagener still engaged in inventing things?" I asked.

"Not he," replied the Colonel. "He's gone where scientific people cease to invent, and where other people get a little rest. Van Wagener died three years ago, and he made a mighty bad end of it. I never saw a man go to such eternal smash before or since. If you care to hear it I'll tell you the melancholy story.

"About five years ago one of Van Wagener's relations died and left him nearly a hundred thousand dollars. Van Wagener gathered in the money, and sold his place at Chicago, and moved back to New Berlinopolisville, where he said that he should spend his days in inventing things for the benefit of mankind. But he never got ready to get to work. He would spend the day sitting and reading scientific books and going to sleep in his easy chair, and ever to tell the simple truth he became about the laziest man in that section of country. Naturally his digestion began to go wrong after a little while, and then he fell into a deep melancholy. The death of Mrs. Van Wagener, which happened very suddenly, seemed to sort of cheer him up for a few days, but before long he was as hypochondriacal and miserable as I was seriously alarmed about him, for although he was one of the best men that ever lived, I was afraid that he might discover that whisky was a temporary cure for hypochondria and that he might, in plain language, take to drink. He didn't take to drink, but he did what was worse— he took to clocks.

"It was about two years after he had retired that the Professor began to show an interest in clocks.

"Every week or two I would notice a new clock somewhere in his house, and at last I felt it my duty to speak to him seriously about it. Professor !' said I, 'if you don't look out you'll become a confirmed clock lunatic. So far you've been what you'll probably call moderate in the use of clocks, but the habit is sure to grow on you, and if you don't brace up, and quit it, you'll squander your money, and ruin your health, and weaken your mind with clocks till you'll have to be carried either to the almshouse or to the grave.'

"Van Wagener only laughed. He said he wasn't in the least bit of danger. He could buy clocks, or he could leave them alone, just as he wanted to. As for saying that he was in danger of falling a victim to the clock habit, that was all nonsense. Clocks in moderation were good for a man, and he always calculated to be moderate in everything.

"Of course you've heard men talk that way before. There never was a man yet who would acknowledge that he was in any danger of becoming a victim to any bad habit until he was just clean, everlastingly, hopelessly ruined. Well! I had said my say, and I didn't feel at liberty to say any more to Van Wagener about his clocks. All the same, the habit grew on him fast, he having no occupation, and his mind lacking the healthy stimulus of a strong- minded wife. Before spring came that unhappy man had no less than thirty-seven clocks in his house that were running day and night, not to mention others that were locked up for use on stormy days when he couldn't get out of the house, and felt that he must have two or three new clocks to keep himself from going stark mad.

"Now the worst thing about the clock habit is not simply that the victim pays out an awful sight of money in buying clocks, but that he tries to regulate those that he has bought.

"Van Wagener would start out every fair morning, and go to every clock shop in New Berlinopolisville. He would always buy one, or perhaps two clocks, and naturally this steady outlay made a rapid hole into his income. If that had been all the trouble, he might have been living yet, though of course he would have been living at somebody else's expense; but, like all clock lunatics, he felt obliged to keep all his clocks regulated, and when it comes to regulating a matter of three or four hundred clocks that are as much set against regulation as so many boys, it tells on a man's nerves.

"All Van Wagener's clocks were strikers, and his particular object was to get all of them to strike at precisely the same minute. Did ever you think what the chances would be of getting three hundred women to meet at any particular place punctual to the minute ! Well! I don't hesitate to say that it wouldn't be half as difficult a job as it would be to try to get even twenty clocks to strike simultaneously.

"Do what he would, Van Wagener could never coax his clocks to get through striking under a quarter of an hour; that is to say, it would be a good quarter of an hour from the time that the fastest clock started to strike, let us say, four o'clock, till the slowest clock got through striking the same hour. "Van Wagener would try to slow down the fast clocks, and the result would be that they would come into the concert about ten minutes after all the rest had quieted down.

"Then he would try to hurry up the slow clocks, and after practising in this way— first with the slow and then with the fast ones— he got the whole lot into such a state that not one of them knew its own mind, and they would strike at all sorts of hours, with no more respect for the truth than if they had been so many politicians.

"And the more Van Wagener meddled with the clocks the crazier they got. Every now and then a clock would start in to strike, say two o'clock, and would keep on till it had struck four or five hundred. The only thing you can do with a clock of that kind is to open it and put some sort of a drag on the wheel; but even then the effect is only temporary. You can stop the striking of a clock by sticking a hairpin between the spokes of a wheel; but the minute you take that hairpin out the clock is bound to make up for lost time.

"The result of all the Professor's efforts to make his clocks strike simultaneously was that there was hardly a minute in the day when one or another of them wasn't on the strike, and the noise in that house was the next thing to the noise in a boiler factory.

"I needn't say that this told on Van Wagener's nerves, as it always does in such cases. to be so nervous that he couldn't talk or think about anything for two consecutive minutes, for he was always waiting for the next clock to strike, and wondering which of the lot it would be.

"I said to him, that if he wanted to save his intellect before it should be for ever too late, he must let every blessed clock run down, and then sell all but one, or perhaps two of them, for what they would fetch.

"But he was too far gone to be able to do this. He confessed, with tears in his eyes, that the clocks had got such a hold on him that he couldn't positively live without them.

" 'I know,' said he, 'that they will be the death of me; but my system has got so habituated to clocks that I should collapse and die on the spot if I were to give them up.'

"He was probably right about that. When the clock habit gets a good hold of a man there isn't any hope for him, and the best thing his friends can do is to hurry up the tragedy by keeping him supplied with fresh clocks, and so undermining his constitution as rapidly as possible.

"The next stage in Van Wagener's downward career was when he took to cleaning his clocks himself. Everybody knows that a clock requires to be cleaned about once a year. If you own a clock, as I make no doubt you do, you find that about once in just so often it stops, and you can't get it started again. Then you take it to a clockmaker, and he looks at it through his magnifying glass, and tells you that it will have to be cleaned, and that you can have it again in about four days by paying a dollar and a half. What the clockmaker does to earn that dollar and a half is to blow through the works of the clock with a bellows, and then to put a few drops of oil in the works. Well, it occurred to Van Wagener, as it always does to the man who has got the clock habit fixed on him, that it was all nonsense to pay out so much money to a clockmaker for cleaning clocks, and that any man who has a bellows, and a little oil, can clean his own clocks. It sounds easy and innocent enough, but it's no better than a delusion of the devil. Van Wagener started in to clean his own clocks, and it put the finishing touch to his ruin.

"He would begin early in the morning to take a clock to pieces, and he would work over it the best part of the day. He would blow on the works, and he would pour oil into them, and he would stir up the wheels with a lead pencil, and tighten this screw and loosen that, till he was tired to death. Sometimes he'd get a clock to go after this sort of treatment, but more generally he gave it a sort of mechanical chill and fever, so that it would rush along at double-quick time for two or three hours, and then slow down and dawdle along, taking two full hours to do a fair twenty minutes. Having so many clocks in the house, there were always from a dozen to twenty that in Van Wagener's opinion required to be cleaned, and after a while he got into such a miserable condition that he did nothing but clean clocks from early in the morning till late at night. I've seen the gas burning in his house at three o'clock in the morning, and have gone in and found him working away at some clock that he had started in to clean before breakfast.

"Before the year was out Van Wagener had wasted away till he didn't weigh over sixty pounds. He had lost his appetite, and even corn-fed pork seemed to go against him. He used to manage to swallow a few cups of tea and three or four sausages in the morning, but he couldn't do that till he had braced himself up by winding all the clocks in the establishment.

"After breakfast he would settle himself down to the cleaning and regulating racket, and would hardly touch an ounce of food all the rest of the day. As for drinking, he did fairly well, taking perhaps half-a-dozen moderate drinks of whisky in the course of the day, and two or three cups of tea.

"Of course the tea was bad for him, but I can't really say that he drank enough tea to do him any great harm. What hurt him more than anything else was the perpetual excitement that the clocks kept him in. His hands used to tremble so that he could hardly manage to hit any given part of a clock with his lead pencil or hairpin, and he would get that faint from exhaustion that his head would sometimes drop on the table in a dead faint, and his hair would get all tangled up with the works of the clock that he was cleaning.

"He admitted to me that he did hardly any sleeping at night. You see that every time a clock struck Van Wagener would get out of bed to find out which particular clock it might be, and to compare it with his watch, and see how far wrong it was, and whether he must slow it down or hurry it up. Even when the clocks didn't happen to strike for an hour or so, he would lie awake, waiting for them to begin. No man can live without eating or drinking or sleeping for any great length of time, and I got so much alarmed about Van Wagener's condition that I asked my doctor— who was one of the best doctors in New Berlinopolisville, and could collar a case of trichinæ quicker than any doctor I ever saw, and was successful with horses as he was with folks— to come in and have a look at the Professor. He did so, and being a free spoken man, and having an income big enough to let him tell the truth without fear of man, he up and told Van Wagener that there was nothing the matter with him but clocks.

" 'It's your sinful and degrading clock habit that's killing you,' said the doctor; 'and unless He even you give up clocks at once, and never so much as look at one again, you'll be a dead man inside of six months. You call yourself a man, and sit here all day by yourself and wallow in clocks! Why, there ain't a beast in New Berlinopolisville— not even a pig— who would sink as low as you have sunk. Chuck those clocks out of the window, and swear off at once, if you've got a spark of manhood left.'

"Van Wagener didn't have life enough in him to get mad at the doctor. thanked him in a humble sort of way, and said that he knew well enough he was a ruined man, and that it was too late for him to hope to reform. All that he asked was to be let alone, so that he could get into his clockwork grave, and be at peace as soon as possible.

"The doctor afterwards told me that he had seen a great many cases of the clock habit in the course of his practice, but that he had never seen as low down and loathsome a case as Van Wagener's. Well, things went on from bad to worse. After a time, common clocks with ordinary striking powers ceased to give Van Wagener any excitement. You know how it is with a man who takes to drink. First along he is perfectly satisfied with cocktails, and juleps, and such; but the day comes when nothing but straight whisky without any water will brace him up. That was the way it was with the Professor.

"Like all other clock victims, when he found that he didn't relish ordinary clocks he took to alarum clocks. When I heard the alarums begin to go off in Van Wagener's bedroom I knew that he had reached the last stage in his downward career, and that the grave or the lunatic asylum were yawning for him.

"He would take a dozen alarum clocks to his bedroom and set the alarums so that they would all go off at different hours. Every time an alarum went off he would get out of bed and try and find out why it went off two hours and a half earlier than the time he had set it for. Of course he couldn't find this out.

"There never was a man yet who could understand the ways of an alarum clock, and especially why it always goes off a long way ahead of time, and never by any accident goes off later than it ought to. Van Wagener was always trying to regulate his alarums, and the result was that he got less sleep than ever.

"Of course, if he had been a temperate and sensible man, and had bought an alarum clock for a legitimate purpose, the alarum would never have waked him up more than three or four times, and after that he would have slept through it every morning without hearing the slightest sound. That's the way an alarum clock affects a man who wants to be waked up. Take a man who needs sleep as much as the Professor needed it, and the meanest sort of a little one shilling alarum clock will wake him up every time.

"Knowing the symptoms of Van Wagener's complaint, I knew that alarum clocks would begin to pall on him in a very little while— and so they did. Then he hit on the plan of standing his clocks in empty tin pans, which about doubled the noise of the alarum. This was like a drunkard who puts red pepper and  Worcester sauce into his whisky to make it bite. My house stood about thirty yards from the Professor's, but I couldn't help hearing the row that the alarum clocks made after he took to strengthening them with his tin pans. used to be waked out of sleep at least a dozen times every night, and I made up my mind that the time had come for me to make a formal complaint about Van Wagener's proceedings, and have him committed to the asylum as an habitual and professional lunatic. However, I as it happened, I wasn't driven to this extreme measure, and I was glad of it, for I had always been friendly with the Professor, and it didn't seem to be a friendly act to send a man to a lunatic asylum.

"One Sunday morning I didn't hear a clock strike in Van Wagener's house. I began to notice it about eight o'clock, and when it came to be about noon and the house continued to be as silent as the tomb, I recognised that some- thing had gone wrong, and that I had better step in next door and see what was the matter.

"I rang Van Wagener's door-bell a dozen times, but nobody answered it. So I finally went to the police station, and got a policeman to come and break the door open. I found Van Wagener alive; but he had gone stark, staring mad. He had taken all his clocks to pieces, and strung the wheels on strings and hung them around his neck. He had the hands of his biggest clock between his teeth, and he was swinging a big weight with one hand, just as if it was a pendulum.

"There he sat, in the middle of the parlour mantelpiece, and he never so much as recognised me or the policeman.

"When I told Van Wagener that he must get down from the mantelpiece and come along with me, he said that he couldn't be moved without deranging his works, and asked me if I would be good enough to wind him up, and set his alarum so that he would go off at six o'clock.

"The policeman said that he hadn't time to attend to any such nonsense as Van Wagener was talking, and so he picked the poor chap up under his arm, and took him off to the station. He lived for about a month more, and then he died in the lunatic asylum, and when his executors came to look into his affairs they found that he hadn't left a blessed cent, except a lot of debts owing to different clockmakers."

End

Table of Contents

- 1: Van Wagener's Eye
- 2: The Explosive Dog
- 3: A Scientific Balloon
- 4: The Flying Cat
- 5: A Tricycle Made for Two
- 6: A Flying March
- 7: Incandescent Cats
- 8: A Scientific Trap
- 9: The Volcanic Valve
- 10: The Fatal Fishing Line
- 11: The Professor's Jump
- 12: The Amphibious Torpedo
- 13: The Floating Magnet
- 14: Van Wagener's Clocks