WILLIAM WILL INVENT.'

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3483, 5 September 1882, Page 4

WILLIAM WILL INVENT.'

' It is all very well to talk about working for tho heathen,' said one, as the ladies of the circle put aside their sewing, ' but I'd like to have someone tell mo what to do with my husband.' ' What's the matter with him ?' asked a sympathetic old lad} r . ' William is a good man,' continued the first, ■waving her glasses in an argumentative way, ' but William will invent. He goes inventing around from morning till night, and I have no peace or comfort. I didn't object ■when he invented a fire escape, but I did remonstrate when he wanted me to crawl out of the window one night last winter to see if it worked well. Then he originated a lock for the door, that wouldn't open from midnight until morning, so as to keep burglars out. The first time he tried it he caught his coat-tail in it, and I had to walk around him with a pan of hot coals all night to keep him from freezing.' ' Why didn't he take his coat off ?' ' I wanted him to, biifc he stood till the thing opened itself, trying to invent some way of unfastening it. That's William's trouble. He will invent. A little while ago ho got up a cabinet bedstead that would shut up and open without handling. It went by clockwork. William got into it and up it went. Bless your heart, he stayed in there from Saturday afternoon till Sunday evening, when it flew open and disclosed William with the plans and specifications of a patent wash-bowl that would tip up when it got too full. The result of this was that I lost all my rings and a breast-pin down the waste-pipe. Then he put up a crutch for a man that could also be used as an operaglass. When the man leaned on it up it shut, and when he put it to his eye to find William, it flew out into a crutch, and almost broke the top of his head off.' ' Don't any of his inventions amount to anything ?' ' He says they do. Once he invented a ropeladder to be worn as a guard chain and lengthened out with a spring. He put it round his neck, but the spring got loose and turned it into a ladder, and almost choked him to death. Then he invented a patent boot-heel to crack nuts with, and gave it up. His coal-scuttle has made iuoro trouble than anything else. It was riveted to tho grate, and when the fire got low it would turn over and over and put on coal. The rivets got rusty, so he couldn't get it off, and I just sit up in bed and listen to that scuttle all night. Then he arranged a corn-popper bo it would wriggle itself, and now he can't stop it. You can hear that popper going in the closet, and ho won't let me throw it away, because he wants to invent something to hold it still. Why, he has got a washtub full of inventions. One of thorn is a prayerbook that always opens at the right place. Wβ tried it one morning at church, but the wheels and springs made such a row that sexton took tVilliam, ,J|y the collar and told him to leave his fire-engines, at home when he came to worship. The other day I saw him going up the street with tho model of a grain-elevator sticking out of his hip pocket, and he ie fixing up an improved shot-tower in our bed-room. ' Does he make any money out of his inventions ?' ' Hβ doesn't appear to. The other nighfc a man came down and wanted William to got up a patent umbrella

fastening. Since then he has wrecked all the umbrellas and parasols in the house. We haven't a thing to use if it should rain. Now he is at work on a combined cat and rat trap. The cats and rats go in at different ends, and cat each other up—at least, he says they will; and after that lie is going at a pair of pantaloons in which a man can fall down without spraining his leg. William means well, but he has got the mania for inventing, and I don't know wherejit will end.' And the woman sighed as she started for home to see what new inconvenience her ingenious husband was preparing to perpetrate.