The Kanzas news., 1857-07-18

of its uses. The patent Office at Washlng-
ton, like your magazine, Mr. Editor, may
exhibit finished productions or inventive
genius , but if you could look into the port
folios of your contributors, in every quarter
of the Union, and see there the sketches of
half-fnished essays, stillborn poems, links
and fragments of ideas and conceptions,
which but breathed and died. you might
form some notion of the accumulation of
notions that were presented to me on enter
ing the workshop of Jabez Doolittle. But
to my text again: '' The First Locomotive. -
There it stood, occupying the centre of all
previous conceptions,-rat traps, churns,
apple pearers, pill rollers, cooking stoves
and sbingle splitters, which hung or stood
around it /; or as my Lord Byron says with
reference to more ancient but not more
important invention
awhere each conception vas q heavenly guest,
A raw of immortality, and stood,
Star-like around, ultil they gathered to God"
And there it stood, the concentrated focus
of all previous rays of inventive genius
The First Locomotive
An unpainted, unpublished, unadorned,
oven shaped mass, of double riveted sheet
iron, with cranks, and pipes, and trunnel
heads, and screws and valves, all firmly
based on four strongly made travelling
wheels
"Its curious critter to look at" says
Jabez, " but you'll like it better when you
see it In notion
He was by this time igniting quantity
of charcoal, which he had stuffed under the
boiler ssI filed the b'iIer," says he, car
ter stopped working here yesterday, and
it han't leaked drop since. 1t viii soon
bile up; the coal is first rate
Sure enough, the boiler soon gave evi-
dence of &c troubled waters" when, by
pushing one slide and pulling another, the
whole machine, cranks and pistons, was in
motion.
eWorks slick don't it ?'' said Jabez.
"But it don't move,'' replied.
"You mean," said he, &c the travelling
wheels don't move well don't mean they
shall, till get my patent" ''You see"
he added, crouching down, 'that trunnel
head, there that small cog wheel? Well,
that's out of gear Just yet when turn
that into gear, by this crank, it fits, you
the hull scrape viii move, as nigh as can
calculate, little slower than chainlight-
enin' and a darned little too But it
| patent. There is only one thing yet," he
continued, ''that I han't contrived-but
| that is simple matter; the shortest mode
of stopping ON her. My first notion is-to
see how fast I can make her work, without
smashing all to bits, and that's done by
screwing down this upper valve; and I'll
/ show you
And with that, he clambered up on the
top, with a turning screw in one hand, and
horn of soft soap in the other, and com
menced screwing down the valves and oil
ing the piston rod and crank joints and
| the motion of the mysterious mass increased
until all seemed abuz.
''It is nigh about perfection, amt it %
says Jabez.
Jabez," said I, eievating my voice
above the buzzing noise of the machine,
''there is only one thing wanting
"What is that % says he, eagerly.
% Immortality l'' says I, and you shall
have it, patent or no patent ]" And with
that, pulled the crank that twisted the
/ connecting tunnel head into the travelling
wheels, and in an instant away went the
machine, with Jabez on the top of it, with
the whiz and rapidity of flushed part
ridge. The side of the old building pre-
sented the resistance of wet paper. One
crash, and the s' first locomotive was ush-
cred into this breathing world. / hurried
to the opening. and had just time to clam
Der to the top of a fence, to catch the last
glimpse of my fast departing friend. True
to his purpose, saw him alternately screw
ing down the valves, and oiling the piston
rod and crank joints evidently determined
that, although he had started little unex-
pectedly, he would redeem the pledge he
had given, which was, that when it did go,
it :" would 60 little slower than a streak of
chain lightenin' and darned leetle too p
| "Like q cloud in the dim distance feeting,
/ Like an arrow" he few away.
i But a moment, and he was here, in a
moment he was there, and now, where is he,
! or rather, where is he not Z? But that, for
the present, is " neither here nor there"
i Ny task is done. All now ask is, that
| although some doubt and mystery hang over
the first invention of steamboat in which
doubt however, l for one do not participate;
/ none whatever may exist In regard to the
i origin of the locomotive branch of the great
steam family and that in all future time,
this fragment of authentic history may ena-
ble the latest posterity to retrace, by the
'b back track" and ss turn out,'' through a
long railroad line of illustrious ancestors,
the protector and contriver of ''the first
| locomotive" the immortal progenitor, ia
bez Doolittle, Esq, nigh Walingford, Con-
necticut.''
I An Aoed Ne0-o