LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



Cold-feet." Nothing surprised him ; he never lost his 

 temper; he laughed so seldom that the incident was 

 noted and told to the neighbors ; his attitude was one 

 of abstraction, and when he spoke it was like a judge 

 charging a jury with soda-water. 



All of his spare time was given up to whittling, sawing, 

 pounding and making mathematical calculations. 

 Not all of his inventions were toys, for among other 

 things he constructed a horseless carriage which was 

 run by a crank and pumping device, by the occupants. 

 The idea of the horseless carriage is a matter that has 

 long been in the minds of inventors. Several men, su- 

 premely great, have tried their hands and head at it. 

 Leibnitz worked at it ; Swedenborg prophesied the auto- 

 mobile, and made a carriage, placing the horse inside, 

 and did not give up the scheme until the horse ran 

 away with himself and demolished the result of a year's 

 work. The government here interfered and placed an 

 injunction against "the making of any more such di- 

 abolical contrivances for the disturbance of the public 

 peace." All of which makes us believe that if Edison 

 and Marconi had lived two hundred years ago, the 

 bailiffs would have looked after them with the butt 

 end of the law for the regulation of wizards & witches ; 

 wizards at Menlo Park being quite as bad as witches 

 at Salem. 



Isaac Newton's horseless carriage came to grief in a 

 similar way to Swedenborg' s invention it worked so 

 well and so fast that it turned a complete somersault 

 into a ditch, and its manipulation was declared a pas- 

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