OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO INVENTORS AND MECHANICS. 209 



was unknown in the polite city of Paris, and that kings and qneens in their 

 palaces ate with their fingers, each helping himself like a savage from one 

 common dish. King Henry VIII.— the Bluebeard of English history — was, 

 about that time, the first in England to wear Knit stoc^-ings. The foot cover- 

 ing of even the English nobility had before been of cloth. The streets of 

 London, even a hundred years later, were unlighted at night, save by the lights 

 in the houses; and window glass was still uni>nown in the houses of common: 

 people nearly to the time of the landing of the Pilgrims, and chimneys were 

 rare even in the palaces of kings. Printing had just been invented and books 

 were rare and costly. Clocks, such as we have, did not exist, and such as they 

 had were so rare and costly that few large cities possessed them, and they were 

 looked upon as a costly prize for a kingly victor to seize and carry away among 

 his trophies of war. Flour was ground in mills but was unbolted, and a saw 

 mill was long afterward torn down near London by an angry mob of 

 " strikers " because it was looked upon as a new-fangled device to deprive poor 

 men of the labor of sawing boards by hand. Popes, kings and princes rode on 

 horseback, because it was thought disgraceful for any but ladies to ride in 

 carriages. Sixty years after the discovery of this continent there were but 

 three covered carriages in all the luxurious city of Paris. Even Henry XIV., 

 the great king of France, two hundred years after Columbus's time, wrote one 

 day to a friend: "I cannot call upon you to-day, for the queen is using the 

 carriage." Cotton thread had just been invented, and dressing or toilet pins 

 were about that time introduced into England as an expensive luxury, — made 

 by hand, one at a time, and sharpened upon a* grindstone. Even as late as 

 1812 in our own country they sold at a dollar per paper. "Pin money " had a 

 meaning in those days. 



In referring to these things and to the condition of things in old England in 

 the fourteenth century a writer says: "It must be remembered that the use of 

 artificial light for reading and study is comparatively modern. The universal 

 lighting up of every house as soon as darkness comes over the land is a modern 

 necessity and a modern invention. The long winter evenings of previous 

 generations were spent by the light of a fire" — without chimney and under a 

 hole in the roof — "not by the light of lamps or of candles, so far as the bulk 

 of the people of all lands was concerned. But a very small number could read, 

 and books were so scarce that kings gave security when they borrowed th^m, 

 and Bibles were chained in the churches. In reviewing the mode of life of a 

 king 500 years ago in England, we find one of the royal Plantagenets sitting on 

 a stool whose three legs were driven into the dirt forming the floor of his bed- 

 chamber. The queen sits on the foot of a bedstead, and as evening draws on 

 they find themselves sleepy after a heavy supper of beef and beer. Unable to 

 read,, the time hangs heavy upon their hands." The servants who sleep in the 

 attic above must pass through the royal bed-chamber, or climb to their sleeping 

 places by a ladder outside. The floors of the palace are bare or carpeted with 

 straw in which vermin breed, while there is neither a chimney nor a pane of 

 glass to this regal mansion. Glass windows were indeed introduced into one of 

 the king's palaces in England and into the parliament house in 1265 ; but 

 country houses were not furnished with them till 1600. 



But to come down nearer the present. The inventor and the mechanic in 

 this century has given us the perfected steam engine, — which has furnitihed to 

 every man in Christendom a third arm in addition to the two that nature gave, 

 steam navigation in 1806, ocean navigation in 1819, and railroads about 1830. 



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