Connecticut western news., 1899-11-30


 or six fingers of wood and one of sharp steel, the harvester went across the field, stroke after stroke, precipitation rolling down forehead and cheek and chest, head blistered by the consuming sun and lip parched by the merciless August air, at noon the workmen lying half dead under the trees. One of my most painful boyhood memories is that of my father in harvest time reeling from exhaustion over the doorstep, too tired to eat, pale and fainting as he sat down. The grain brought to the barn, the sheaves were unbound and spread on a thrashing floor, and two men with fails stood opposite each other, hour after hour and day after day, pounding the wheat out of the stalk. Two strokes, and then cessa- ton of sound. Trump, thump. thump, thump, thump, thump! Pounded once and then turned over to be pounded again, slow, very slow. The hens cackled and clucked by the door and picked up the loose grains and the horses half asleep and dozing over the managers where the hay had been.
 wheel or the Reaper.
 But hark to the buzz of wheels in the distance! The farmer has taken his throne on a reaper. He once walk ed; now he rides; once worked with arm of flesh, now with arm of iron. He starts at the end of the wheatfield, heads his horses to the opposite end of the field, rides on. At the stroke of his iron chariot the gold of the grain is surrendered, the machine rolling this way and rolling that, this way and that, until the work which would have been accomplished in many days is ac- complished in few hours, the grain field prostrate before the harvesters.
 Can you imagine anything more beautiful than the sea island cotton? take up the unmelted snow In my hand. How beautiful it is! But do you know by what painstaking and tedious toll it passed Into anything like practicality? If you examined that cotton, you would find it full of seeds. It was severe process by which the seed was to be extracted from the fiber. Vast populations were leaving the south because they could not make any living out of this product. One pound of green seed cotton was all that a man could prepare in one day, but Eli Whitney, a Massachusetts Yankee, woke up, got handful of cotton and went to constructing a wheel for the parting of the fiber and the seed.
 Teeth on cylinders, brushes on cylin- ders, wheels on wheels. South Caro- lima gave him S50,00O for his inven- ton, and, instead of one man taking q whole day to prepare a pound of cot ton for the market, now he may pre- pare three hundredweight, and the south Is enriched, and the commerce of the world Is revolutionized, and over S,00O,OO0 bales of cotton were prepar- ed this year, enough to keep at work in this country 14,300,00O spindles. em- ploying 2IO,0OO hands and enlisting $2S1 100000 of capital.
 Thank you. Eli Whitney, and l.. s. Chichester of New York, his successor. Above all, thank God for their invent i've genius, that has done so much for the prosperity of the world.
 Cause For Thanks.
 Thirdly, look to see what the wheel has done for the travelling world. No one can tell how many noble and self sacrificing inventors have been crush ed between the coach wheel and the modern locomotive, between the pad dle and the ocean steamer.
 I will not enter into the controversy as to whether John Fitch or Robert Fulton or Thomas Somerset was the inventor of the steamboat. They all suffered and were martyrs of the wheel, and they shall be honored. John Fitch wrote:
 The Fist of January. 174s. was the fatal time of bringing me into existence. l know of nothing so perplexing and vexatious to man of feeling as a turbulent wife and steamboat building. I experi- enced the former and quit in season, and had l been in my right senses should undoubtedly have treated the latter in the same manner; but, for one to be leased with both, he must be looked upon the most unfortunate man in the world.
 Surely John Fitch was In a bad pre- dicament. If the steamboat boiler did not blow him up, his wife would. In all ages there are those to prophecy the failure of any useful invention. You do not know what the inventors of the day suffer. When 1t was proposed
  phry Davy, the great philosopher, said that he should as soon think of cutting a slice from the moon and setting 1t upon pole to light the city. Through all abuse and caricature Fitch and Fulton went until yonder the wheel is in motion. and the Clermont, the first steamboat Is going up the North river. running the distance-hold your breath while tell you-from New York to Albany in 32 hours. But the steamboat wheel multiplied its veloci. ties until the Lucania of the Cunard line and the Majestic of the White Star line and the New York of the American line and the Kaiser Wilhelm of the North German Lloyd line cross the Atlantic ocean in six days or less, communication between the two coun- tries so rapid and so constant that whereas once those who had been to Europe took on airs for the rest of their mortal lives-and to me for many years the most disagreeable man I could meet was the man who had been to Europe, despising all American pie lures and American music and Ameri- can society because they had seen Flu ropean pictures and heard European music and mingled in European so- ciety-now a transatlantic voyage is so common that a sensible man would no more boast of it than If be had been to New York or Boston.
 Landmarks of Progress.
 What a difference between John Fitch's steamboat, GO feet long. and the Oceanic, 704 feet long! The ocean wheel turns swifter and swifter, filling up the distance between the hemis- pheres and hastening the time spoken of In the book of Revelation when there shall be no more sea.
 While this has been doing on the water James Watts wheel has done as much on the land. How we'll l re-