Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1910 — HIRAM’S INVENTIONS. [ARTICLE]

HIRAM’S INVENTIONS.

“How did ’Zekiel’s boy ever turn out for smartness?” inquired the former resident of a village. “He wasn’t what you might call real stirring.” The other man replied that Hiram, ifoe “ i boy,” managed to make his brain save his body, although some of his maneuvers seemed to him to be mlsdirectet energy. “Turned out to be an inventor, didn’t he?” "Well, yea,” reluctantly, “I s’pose you might call it that. He has rigged up a good-many devices round the house to saye labor. He made a washing machine ter his mother, but she says it don’t B&ve work; iitj changes the work of washing to the' work of carpentering, for I guess It’s an all-day job to set the thing up and get it to working.” “Does he make any money?” was the practical question. “Well, ' < ao. He cal’lated to on his flying machine, but It skipped up on him. You see, when it comes to changing human beings into birds or bats, it’s tampering with the business of creating, and Hiram, he wasn’t fitted for it. But he has fixed up a good many handy things. “You see,” continued the speaker, “I was out to his place yesterday, and took notice of his methods, and I do declare, it was amußlng. "He used to have a lath* up In the barn chamber that went by footpower, but it was too energetic for his temperament, and so he hitched on an attachment to go by horsepower." “How did he get his horse upitairs?” "He didn’t. He cut a hole in the Boor and let a rope down onto a whirligig in the floor, and harnessed the horse to it, and then he went treading round and round to make that lathe go.” “Who drove the horse?” “Nobody did, and that’s where the Invention came in. The horse bothered him to death about stopping, and he had to keep a little pile of stones an the beach to throw at him; but you see he had to lay down his chisel ind go to the hole every time to get vim at him, so he rigged up an Invention. "He run a fine wire down the rope and hitched It to a nickel plate on the breeching. Then he had his little battery right in a box on the bench, and whenever the horse slowed up he would reach out with his left hand and give the crank a turn —and away they’d go again.” "Well, well! But wasn’t it a little hard on the horse, getting so many shocks?” asked the listener, wonderingly. “I ekways allowed it was. It seems to me inventions don’t actually save any work; they just shift it onto something or somebody else; and as fer doing that, Hiram always was a clipper.”—Youth’s Companion.