INFLUENCE OF INVENTIONS ON CIVILIZATION. 477 



rectly, a man sometimes received one bushel in ten for thrashing, and 

 from ten to twenty bushels must have been a day's work. 



Now a machine will thrash out hundreds of bushels in a day, at an 

 expense of a very few cents a bushel. 



Inventions have changed the meaning of words. When I was a 

 boy, a reaper was a man who reaped grain with a sickle, and a thrasher 

 was one who thrashed it with a flail. Now, reapers and thrashers are 

 machines driven by steam or horse-power. 



For what part of our daily bread are we not indebted to inventions ? 

 Some of the fruits of the earth we eat as Nature gives them to us, but 

 how much even of them do we take directly from the tree or shrub or 

 plant which produced it, and eat without the aid of invention ? 



All our animal food comes within our reach and is prepared for use 

 only by the aid of inventions. 



Hooks and nets and spears give us all we have of fish. The fish- 

 hook is a very simple contrivance. Is it a great invention or a small 

 one? If the fish-hooks should all be suddenly destroyed, together 

 with the ability to make them, would not the loss of the invention be 

 a greater calamity than any which has befallen the world for a thou- 

 sand years? If so, were not the inventors of that instrument, and 

 those who have improved it, real benefactors to the world ? 



Could we get along without needles ? Could we give up pins with- 

 out a sigh ? Are knives and forks and spoons a necessity ? They are 

 all among the simplest things that man makes, yet he has not obtained 

 them without a great deal of mental labor ; without the exercise of 

 powers of invention of a high order. 



It is less than fifty years since the little articles called matches have 

 come into use. They are now so common and so cheap that we use 

 them almost as we do air and water, without thinking at all of their 

 real value. How few there are of us who do not use them every day 

 and many times a day, and how inconvenient it would be not to have 

 them ! But, when I was a boy, nobody had them ; nobody could have 

 them, for they did not exist. In the country-houses, at least, the great- 

 est care was exercised not to let the fire go out upon the hearth, be- 

 cause in such case it became necessary to send to a neighbor's, often 

 at a distance, for a fresh brand. Every night the live coals upon the 

 hearth were carefully buried in the ashes to preserve them alive for 

 the morning. In spite of this precaution, the fire was often lost. I 

 have been sent many a time, in such cases, to a neighbor's in a cold 

 morning to get a burning brand to start the fii-e at home anew. No- 

 body now thinks of taking any pains to preserve a fire, for it is easier 

 to start a new one with a match than to preserve an old one. A very 

 common way of lighting a candle in the house when darkness came on 

 was to take, with the tongs, a coal from the fire — wood-fires were then 

 used — and blow it, applying the wick of the candle to it at the same 

 time. Sometimes it could be lighted very readily, but oftentimes it 



