Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1884 — The Duke of Wellington’s Experiment. [ARTICLE]

The Duke of Wellington’s Experiment.

In a ground-floor of one of the large public buildings of London a man sat writing at a table covered with papers. He was a short, strongly built figure, with a prominent nose, and a face hard and massive as a granite statue, wearing the set look peculiar to men who have surmounted great difficulties and confronted great perils. Few, indeed, had had more practice in both than this man, for he was no other than the Duke of Wellington, and his crowning victory at Waterloo was but a few years old. There was the tinkle of a bell outside, and then a murmur of voices in the ante-room; but the Duke never raised his head from his writing, even when his Secretary entered and said: “If it please your Grace, that man with the bullet-proof breastplate has called again, and wishes very much to see your Grace for a moment,” TheCDuke’s face darkened, as well it might, for the man in question was the most pertinacious bore he had ever encountered. The bullet-proof cuirass was his own invention, and he never lost a chance of declaring that the safety of the whole British army depended upon its instant adoption of this “unparalled discovery,” which he carried about with him, and exhibited at all times and in all places. Had this been all he would soon have been disposed of; but, unluckily, he had contrived to interest in his invention one or two of the Duke’s personal friends, and to get from them letters of recommendation which even Wellington could not easily disregard. Something must clearly be done, however; for although the fellow had hitherto been kept at bay, he was evidently determined to give the Duke no peace till the matter had been fully gone into. For a moment Wellington looked so grim that the Secretary began to hope for the order which he would gladly have obeyed, viz., to kick the inventor into the street forthwith. But the next instant the iron face cleared again, and over it played the very ghost of a-smile, like a gleam of winter sunshine upon a precipice. “Show him in,” said he, briefly. The observant secretary noted both the tone and smile that accompanied it; and he inwardly decided that it would have been better,for that inventor if he had not insisted on seeing the Duke. In came the great discoverer—a tall, slouching, shabby, slightly red-nosed man, with a would-be jaunty air, wfeich gave way a little, however, before the “Iron Duke’s” pqpetrating glance. “I am glad to think that your Grace appreciates the merits of my invention,” said he, in a patronizing tone. “They are, indeed, too important to be undervalued by any great commander. Your Grace can not fail to rememher the havoc made by your gallant troops at Waterloo among the French cuirassiers, whose breastplates were not bulletproof; whereas, if ” “Have you got the thing with you ?” interrupted Wellington. The inventor unwrapped a very-showy looking cuirass of polished steel, and was just beginning a long lecture upon its merits, when the Duke cut him short by asking. “Are you quite sure it is bulletproof?” “Quite sure, your Grace.” “Put it on, then, and go and stand in that corner.” The other wonderingly obeyed. “Mr. Temple,” shouted Wellington to his secretary, “tell the sentry outside ■to load with ball cartride, and come in here to test this cuirass. Quick, now!” But quick though the secretary was, the inventor was quicker still. The moment he realized that he had been set up there on purpose to be fired at, and to be shot dead on the spot if his cuirass turned out to be not bulletproof after all, he leaped headlong through the open window with a yell worthy of a Blackfoot Indian, and darting like a rocket across the court-yard, vanished through the outer gateway; nor did the Duke of W ellington, from that day forth, ever see or hear of him again.— David Ker, in Editor’s Drawer, Harper’s Magazine.