in at such an angle as to bring the upper end outside 

 of the low curb; the crudely-made boot-leg bucket 

 was some two or three feet under water. 



It was just twenty-four minutes after Perkins stuck 

 his knife into the old boot-leg that he had the water 

 pouring over his legs and feet from his extemporized 

 pump. The Commodore declined going into test 

 of quantity pumped, acknowledged himself beaten, 

 said the supper should be at Rubican's; that Perkins 

 should name the time and invite the guests. 



Out of little things do great ones grow is true, and 

 it is always interesting to trace their course. Among 

 the lookers on at this trial were two of father's friends, 

 who happened in, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, 

 who at that time were engaged in their effort to float 

 anthracite coal down the Lehigh and Delaware in 

 small barges. Mr. White was so well pleased with 

 the plan of these box pumps with leather buckets, 

 that he adopted them for their barges, from which 

 they found their way to the fiat boats of the Susque- 

 hanna, and finally to the Ohio river, and the Missis- 

 sippi and its tributaries, and now there is not a coal 

 barge or shell that descends the Ohio with its millions 

 of tons of coal, or a flat boat carrying millions worth 

 of produce from all the tributaries of the might)' 

 "Father of Waters" that has not two or more of these 

 simple box pumps, worked by spring poles and man 

 power, and on which the safety of its cargo depends, 

 and the leather buckets, or suckers as they are tech- 

 nically called in the West, are to be found ready 

 made for sale in all the supply stores on the rivers. 

 It is just that Perkins should have the full credit of the 

 invention, for small as it appeared at first, it has 

 proved of great utility and vast importance. 36 



Up to this point the Commodore had taken his 

 defeat good humoredly, remarking "that the United 

 States can have any number of my safety pumps on 

 all their vessels, but they cannot find a Jacob Perkins 

 for every man of war." This was the kind of flattery 

 that Perkins liked and never forgot, and he referred 

 to this when I saw him in London in 1832. 



As the Commodore was having his pump placed 

 on a dray to return it to the Navy Yard, a couple 

 of men came up the court; one remarked to the other, 



36 This pump, patented on March 23, 181 3, two years before 

 Perkins came to Philadelphia, was adopted by several U.S. 

 naval vessels before and during 1816. The plan was also 

 submitted to the Royal Society of Arts in London on January 

 10, 1820. (Bathe and Bathe, cited in note 26 above, pp. 

 49-50, 189-190.) 



"That is the biggest beer pump I ever saw; it is a 

 whopper." 



The Commodore hearing this asked the man what 

 he meant; if he thought it would answer to pump 

 beer from one vat into another. The man, who was 

 foreman of a brewery near by, replied that he meant 

 just what he had said, and if the gentleman would 

 wait a few minutes he would show him. He left and 

 soon returned, carrying an English wing beer pump, 

 such as had been used in England time out of mind 

 for pumping beer from the barrel into the glasses 

 or mugs. 



This was too much for the Commodore; to think 

 that his great pump that he had spent so much thought 

 and labor on, should have been in common use for 

 probably more than a century for such an ignoble 

 purpose, and that he should not have known it. 

 Father tried to satisfy him that his credit for the in- 

 vention was as great as if he had not been antici- 

 pated, as he did not know of it; that the invention 

 had so long stood the test of use should encourage 

 him; that with him invention was not a necessity but 

 a pleasure, and that he should persevere, but advised 

 him when any new idea occurred to him to use every 

 endeavor to learn what had been done in the same 

 direction. [7] 



I do not know anything of the oyster supper, as I 

 was too young to be of the party, but I do know 

 that it was a long time before the Commodore again 

 came to the shops. 



One morning I found him sitting in the office, both 

 Mr. Perkins and father being absent. He was play- 

 ing with a two-foot rule. He held one end on the 

 table, the middle joint being up. He was sliding the 

 other end back and forth, watching the rise and fall 

 of the toggle. I told him father and Mr. Perkins 

 would soon be in; he said he would wait. He then 

 asked me to observe that, at the angle he held the 

 rule, that when he moved the end he held in his right 

 hand one inch, the middle joint would rise over two 

 inches, but when he lowered the middle joint a push 

 of y t inch would raise it the two inches, but it took 

 a much greater force. He said he had by trial found 

 the angle to place it at, to raise it the distance re- 

 quired with the greatest ease. I could not under- 

 stand what he was driving at. 



When Mr. Perkins came in he told him that he had 

 perfected the application of the toggle joint to the 

 capstan, and that it worked to perfection; that he had 

 a carriage waiting to take Mr. Perkins and my father 



20 



