The Stamford American., 1906-10-11
The Iron Man on
 the Crossing

!
 auto just honk. honk! at me as he
 came rushing for the crossing, putting
 it up to me to hustle to get out of his
 way; it made me nervous to have to
 jump like that, and it irritated me to
 have anybody treat me with such ut | ter and complete contempt.
 l Moreover, as I understand it, the l pedestrian has the right of way on a l crossing, and it is the vehicle that l should give way to him, not he to the l vehicle. But here were men who were 1 depriving me of my should be inalien- 1 able rights absolutely, and not only l so, but doing this with the utmost rudeness and i'll manners, giving no | more thought or consideration to me 1 than they would to a squeaking pig ] crossing their course, not considering 1 me as person at all, but simply honk honking to me to get out of the way, 1 to skip, jump. skiddoo.
 Tt really was disturbing, and this so wrought upon me that it came to l seem that it would be wholly right to employ any means in retaliation. T have friend, an ingenious and
 resourceful friend, who makes it his business to build working models for inventors from plans, or rude models submitted, or, as he sometimes does, simply from ideas; and not infrequent- ly he supplies missing links; he breathes the breath of life into ma chimes that without his help would never have moved. He is the inventors friend, this friend of mine and to him
 went with an idea, with full confi-
 dence that he could bring it into being which he did.
 The idea was for a mechanically
 actuated iron man which could be
 made to move along over a street
 crossing, and this idea be wrought out
 with entire success. He made the fig
 ure that of man of only ordinary
 stature, but of decidedly portly build, that of man who would naturally walk with his feet somewhat apart this to give the figure a broad and stable base on the ground-and would walk slowly. -4@..ss>szassSas>A @..ss>szassSSass> Azzsss@sss~s,v-
 We pT6pped up the floor of my friends laboratory from underneath and tried the figure there and it worked perfectly. How much the iron man weighed I don't know, because we never weighed it; but it must have been 17 tons, at least.
 Running through that part of the town in which dwell is a broad ave nue much frequented by automobiles, and on this avenue there is one par ticular crossing, customarily taken by me, from which often, to escape de- struction, I have been compelled to jump and flee. Near the close of one bright summers day we brought the iron man, suitably clad, along and stood him up at one end of this cross ing and faced him right and set him going slowly over.
 Of course there was chance that he would miss all the autos or that the autos would all miss him, and then it would have been all for nothing, for we couldn't stay there and repeat in- definitely. It didn't turn out so, how ever, though the figure was half way over before anything happened. Then
 something did. happen.
 Coming bounding down the avenue there was a bright red runabout, with
 a battleship sized horn, now honk,
 honking for the fat man on the cross
 ing to skip, skip along, and keeping
 coming full tilt straight at him, never
 doubting that he would jump in time.
 But this man wasn't a jumper, and the next instant the little red auto was up-
 on him, with results amazing.
 ''The fat man wasn't smashed, de-
 stroyed, annihilated by the collision;
 l,o hv hut a
 tie red auto with the big horn, coming
 at him fair and square, and spilling out the two men that had been in it, as it rose, rode up his side when it hit him, and fell over back from him a wreck sssssz5 asslssz.s:a < asSs >>ss~-
 T guess there was something doing there, don't you think, and-and what a tribute, this, to the skill and solid workmanship of my friend the builder the shock didn't even disarrange the 1 machinery of the iron man who. as the red auto went to smash. walked stead ily on. quite calm and undisturbed. "A greater shock was to come for the iron man, one under which he did go down at last; though even as he lay fallen he wrought dire destruction on the big machine that bowled him over. "This was a giant automobile that was coming booming down tho nue a little to the right of the - 1 red auto and not very far behind it, with it's horn hoarsely hooting; and
 while yet the iron man had advanced
 scarcely ten feet further in his calm,
 unruff1ed progress this giant machine was upon him with an Irresistible
 shock, and down he went; but as the great auto shot on forward over his | prostrate form his hard feet and hands and elbows caught in and seemed to
 loosen up every part of it's machinery, for as it still shot forward it dronned