LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES.—HOW SUCCESS TS WON.

own provisions. It was a cheerless journey, but
it is, as we have seen repeatedly, grim necessity
that forces men to heroic effort. For eight months
Elias worked for Mr. Thomas, and he sent for his
family; but after the machine was in good work-
ing order, the inventor evidently was not wanted
longer. And now what should he do in a strange
country? He borrowed a few tools and tried to
make another machine, but this did not secure
daily bread. He pawned his clothes, raised a little
money, and again sent his family back to his father’s
house in Cambridge.

Now alone, and penniless, he borrowed money
to pay for his scanty food —often beans — which
he cooked in his shop—and toiled on. A man
less brave than Elias Howe would probably have
drowned himself in the Thames, or attempted to
drown his sorrows in drink, but he still believed
in the great utility, in the great public benefit of
his invention, though the world, as ever, thought
him an idiot, a crazed dreamer, for his pains.
With no work, no friend to lend him any more
money, he sold the machine which he had spent
four months in making for twenty-five dollars,
pawned another, drew his baggage in a hand-cart
to an out-going vessel, found a place as cook in
the steerage, and set his face toward America.

His hopes had not been realized abroad. He
had come back in utter penury, but he was thank-
ful that he should see the dear ones whom he loved.

What was his amazement, his grief, when he landed -

in New York, to hear that his wife, worn with the
privations incident to being the companion of an
inventor, was dying of consumption. He had but
sixty-two cents in the world, and could not possibly
go to Cambridge. At once he sought employment
in a machine shop, hoping in a few days to earn
enough to take him to her bedside, but fortunately
he received ten dollars from his father, hastened to
her, and received her dying words of love and en-
couragement,

Borrowing a suit of clothes to attend the funeral,
for his own were too shabby, for the first time the
hapless inventor looked and felt discouraged and
‘desolate. With his wife’s companionship and cheer,
fragile though she was, he had ever been strong,
and he had always believed that he should earn
enough to make her comfortable, nay, to surround
her with luxury and beauty! To render his cir-
cumstances still worse, the ship in which were
stored all his household goods, had gone to the
bottom off Cape Cod. Perhaps now his visions
of success vanished; certain it is that he at once
went back into a shop at weekly wages —his friends
thought him a “sadder, yet a-wiser man.”

Meantime other men in America had been read-
ing about Howe’s invention, and they were thinking
out and working out similar projects. One man
in New York State exhibited a “ Yankee Sewing
Machine” as a curiosity, at twelve and a half cents

297

admission. Ladies came eagerly and carried home
pieces of the work, as a marvel. Elias Howe read
of this. He knew that all this success belonged
to him; but how could he begin a suit for his
rights, with his only machine in pawn across the
seas? Again and again he begged men to take
up the matter, striving to convince them that they
would make money for themselves, eventually; but
those who believed in him, were without funds, and
those who had funds were unwilling to risk their
money in so novel an uncertainty. At last one
person was found who promised to codperate pro-
vided that Howe’s father would mortgage his farm
to him for security. This Elias himself felt was a
great risk in behalf of an invention which had thus
far brought only disappointment to its originator.
But the father consented, and for four years the
weary lawsuits dragged along.

The most important was with Isaac Singer, an
actor, who having seen Howe’s machine, deter-
mined to make one, and in eleven days, working
twenty-one hours out of the twenty-four, had suc-
ceeded. At once, with great energy, he had adver-
tised, and had begun to send out agents. The real
inventor now notified him that he was infringing, and
by and by, too, the courts decided in Howe’s favor.

It was now nine years since the first machine
was made; nine years of exceeding bitterness and
of hope deferred." He was thirty-five when the long
looked-for day of success dawned. Many machines
were made, and sold both here and abroad, and
Elias Howe’s income soon increased, and swelled
to the large sum of two hundred thousand dollars
yearly! The mechanic was no longer cook in the
steerage, no longer subsisting upon a few beans,
cooked and eaten in his dingy workshop. In thirteen
years he had received two million dollars from this,
the thought of his own brain. He was recognized
as a benefactor to labor, to commerce, and to women
in every station in life.

When the civil war began, Mr. Howe was ready
to leave his prosperous business and help save the
Union. Did he enter the war as an officer? No;
the millionnaire considered himself no better than
any other true-hearted private. The following in-
cident shows well his character:

At the moment when Mr. Howe avowed his determination
to enlist, his coachman had entered the building to witness
the proceedings. He was a warm-hearted Irishman, named
Michael Cahill, past the age of military service as determined
bylaw. Upon hearing his employer’s speech, he rushed for-
ward, and clambering upon the platform, he cried out: “Put
my name down too. I can’t bear to have the old man go
alone.” So down went the name of Michael Cahill, coach-
man, next to that of Elias Howe. Laughter and cheers min-
gled in about equal proportions. For four months after the
Seventeenth Connecticut entered the field, the Government
was so pressed for money, that no payments to the troops
could be made. One day a private soldier came quietly to
the paymaster’s office in Washington, and as there were
several officers there to be attended to, he took a seat in the
corner to await histurn. When the officers had been disposed