1. In the course of the last twenty-five years, the sewingmachine has become an article of general household, besides being an indispensable apparatus to all those trades that require in one form or the other the employment of the stitching art. For this sublime specimen of mechanical workmanship the public are indebted to the ingenuity of Elias Howe.

2. Howe was born in 1819, at Spencer, Massachusetts, where his father was a farmer and miller. In consequence of a kind of inherited lameness, the boy was not well fit for the hard work on the farm, and so he obtained, in 1835, his parents' consent to be bound an apprentice to a large manufactory of cotton machinery, in Lowell. Afterwards he found work in Boston, at the shop of Ari Davis, a skillful but eccentric man.

3. During his stay with Ari Davis, young Howe one day overheard a conversation the topic of which proved to be decisive for the later course of his life. Two gentlemen strove to construct a knitting-machine, which was a task beyond their ability. They brought the machine to the shop of Ari Davis, to see if his genius could overcome the difficulty, and make the machine work.

4. The shopmen gathered around the knitting-machine and its proprietors, and were listening to an explanation of its principle, when Davis, in his wild, extravagant way, broke in with these words: "What are you bothering yourselves with a knitting-machine for? Why don't you make a sewing-machine?"

5. "I wish I could,' ," said one of the knitting-machine men, "but it can't be done."

"O, yes, it can," said Davis; "I can make a sewingmachine myself."

"Well," said the other, "do it, Davis, and I'll insure you an independent fortune.'

6. There the conversation dropped, and it was never resumed. Nor did Howe at that time seriously think about

the suggested idea, but some years later the recollection of having once heard that "an independent fortune" was ready for the successful inventor of a sewing-machine took possession of him.

7. He had become a married man. He found it difficult to supply the wants of a growing family out of the returns of his labor as a journeyman machinist. Besides, this labor was overburdening his delicate, constitution. It was the pressure of poverty and extreme fatigue that caused him, about the year 1843, to set about the work of inventing the machine upon which he had settled his hopes for better days.

8. He wasted many months on a false scent. When he began the experiment, his only thought was to invent a machine which should do what he saw his wife doing when she sewed. He took it for granted that sewing must be that, and his first device was a needle pointed at both ends, with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the cloth, and carry the thread through it at each thrust. Hundreds of hours, by night and day, he brooded over this conception, and cut many a basket of chips in the endeavor to make something that would work such a needle so as to form the common stitch. He could not do it.

9. One day the thought flashed upon him, Is it necessary that a machine should imitate the performance of the hand? May there not be another stitch? This was the crisis of the invention. The idea of using two threads, and forming a stitch by aid of a shuttle and a curved needle, with the eye near the point, soon occurred to him, and he felt that he had invented a sewing-machine. It was in the month of October, 1844, that he was able to convince himself, by a rough model of wood and wire, that such a machine as he had projected would sew.

10. A friend of the inventor's, one George Fisher, was willing to furnish the funds for further proceedings, and after much labor and expense the model and the documents

were ready for the Patent Office, and were carried to Washington by the two associates. On September 10th, 1846, the patent was issued.

11. But the new device was not at all welcomed or encouraged by the tailoring profession. Some objected that the machine did not make the whole garment. Others dreaded to encounter the fierce opposition of all the journeymen. Still others thought it would beggar all handsewers, and refrained from using it on principle. Others admitted the utility of the machine and the excellence of the work done by it; but, they said, "We are doing well as we are, and fear to make such a change." The great cost of the machine was a most serious obstacle, too, to its introduction. A copy of the first machine Howe used for exhibition in his window, did cost himself two hundred and fifty dollars.

12. Meeting with no success in his native country, Howe wanted Old England to make a territory for his invention. He set sail for London in 1847. He fell into the hands of a man who intended to have all the advantages for himself and to treat the inventor as a laborer who has to work for his wages. It was only by pawning his first precious machine and his letters-patent that Howe obtained the means of returning to America.

13. When he arrived at home, Elias Howe discovered, much to his surprise, that the sewing-machine had become celebrated, though its inventor appeared forgotten. Several ingenious mechanics had turned their attention to inventing in the same direction, or to improving upon Howe's devices. For five years to come he had, by the aid of new gained friends, to fight the infringers, but when, at last, his patent was lawfully acknowledged, it began to yield a princely

revenue.

14. The contest of improving and changing the first device of the sewing-machine has been carried on in such a degree, that about nine hundred patents for machines and

improvements have been issued in the United States. Perhaps thirty of these patents are valuable; but the great improvements are not more than ten in number, and most of those were made in the infancy of the machine.

CXXV.-ACCOUNT OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK.

fic'-tion, a feigned story; Dichtung.
in-ju-di-cious, unwise; unverständig.
in-tol'-er-a-ble, insufferable; unerträglich.
bru-tal'-i-ty, cruelty; Unmenschlichkeit.

e-qua-nim ́-i-ty, evenness of mind; Gleichmut.
lux-u'-ri-ant, in great abundance; üppig.
de-ject'-ed, cast down; niedergeschlagen.
pine, to languish; schmachten.

di-vert', to turn off; ablenken.

pro-fi'-cient, an expert; Meister.

dis-tinc'-tion, rank; Würde; Rang.

re-served', modest; zurückhaltend..

se-clu'-sion, separation; Abgeschiedenheit.

1. This singular man, whose solitary residence in the Island of Juan Fernandez suggested the matchless fiction of Robinson Crusoe, was born in 1676, at Largo, a village in Scotland. He was a restless and troublesome youth, of a quarrelsome temper, and almost always engaged in mischief. His faults of character were aggravated by the injudicious severity of his father, whose iron strictness of rule produced upon the rebellious nature of his son an effect different from what was intended.

2. The boy's own wish was to go to sea; but his father desired to keep him at home as an assistant in his own trade, which was that of a shoemaker. But when the lad grew up, and he became his own master, he followed the profession which he preferred. Having been for some years at sea, he was at length employed as a sailing master on board one of two armed vessels sent out by England to an

noy the Spanish possessions on the coast of South America; the two countries being then at war.

3. Selkirk's residence on his solitary island was not in consequence of shipwreck, as might naturally be supposed, but was the act of his own deliberate choice, in order to escape from the intolerable tyranny and brutality of his commanding officer, a man named Stradling. After cruising for some time along the coast of Chili, Selkirk's vessel went to the Island of Juan Fernandez to refit. While there, Selkirk formed the resolution to remain upon the island. Accordingly, when the vessel was about to depart, he went into a boat with all his effects, and was rowed ashore under the direction of the captain. This was in the month of October, 1704.

4. His first sensation on landing was one of joy, arising from a sense of being relieved from the annoyances under which he had so long suffered; but he no sooner heard the sound of the receding oars, than the sense of solitude and helplessness fell upon his mind, and made him rush into the water to entreat his companions to take him once more on board. The brutal commander only made this change of resolution a subject of mockery, and told him it would be best for the remainder of the crew that so troublesome a fellow should remain where he was.

5. Here, then, was a single human being left to provide for his own subsistence upon an uninhabited and uncultivated island, far from all haunts of his kind, and with but faint hopes of ever again mingling with his fellow-creatures. Vigorous as the mind of Selkirk appears to have been, it sank for some days under the horrors of his situation, and he could do nothing but sit upon his chest, and gaze in the direction in which the ship had vanished, vainly hoping for its return.

6. On partly recovering his equanimity, he found it necessary to consider how he should support life. The