Review.

He answered " Yes , " and added with a little pride , that he was quite self-taught . It was one of his deprivations , he said , that he could no longer read . He could have borne anything better thau the loss of sight . AH his speech was broken aud

interrupted by a terrible hacking cough , and his stoop was painful iu its helplessness . He asked me suddenly if I knew anything about mechanics . " For two or three years , " he said , " I have had no chance of speaking to anybody who could

understand me . I am the inventor of perpetual motion , Sir . I have mastered the problem which has puzzled mechanicians for centuries . Will you come and look at my invention ? Shall I bring it to you 1 I knew little or nothing about mechanics

, I answered , but should be glad to look at his invention . " Take me home , Lizzie , " he said eagerly , and the child turned at once into one of those dreadful courts

which he off Holborn . As I followed , the old man apologized for the place . " I have never seen it , " he said , " but I know it is as vile a hole as a man could well live in . You're not afraid to come , Sir ? " " Not at all , " I told him . The place was frowsy and miserable . Rotting garbage lay about the broken pavement , and the day ' s rain had awakened a score of evil odours . He

led me into a wretched room on the groundfloor of one of the decrepit houses . The p lace was unevenly paved with battered and broken bricks , and the wails were moist and discoloured . It was almost void . A plank stretched from one heap of bricks to another did duty for a seatand there

, were a ricketty table and an old tea-chest in the room . Nothing else , except a heap of sacking and shavings iu one corner . As we entered the forlorn apartment the old man held up his hand in a listening attitude , and I heard a faint clicking sound like that

of a clock . He released the hand of bis child and went gropingly across the room to the tea-chest , and stooping down , produced from it a cigar box . Holding this in both hands , he came with that pathetically uncertain footstep back to the

table . H laid the box down and untied the string which fastened the lid . " Look here , Sir , " he said , and I advanced to the table . There was a tiny steel hammer hanging from a brass rod and falling perpetually upon a little catch which rose from

a polished brass case ; and there were two small metal cubes darting to and fro along the rod from which the hammer was suspended . Might I take it from the box 1 I asked . The old man laid his hands jealousl y over it . He took it out himself ,

however , and laid it upon the table . " These cubes of metal , " he said " are magnets . They are turned by a circular spring within the box , and they keep the steel pendulum in motion . The hammer on the pendulum strikes the latch as it falls

and gives the spring one coil . It wastes exactly that one coil in working the magnets . A feather ' s weight on either side would destroy the balance , and the machine would stop . It has been going now for more than three years , and will

continue to go as long as the material endures . " Could you not find a purchaser for your invention ? " I asked again . People , he told me , had offered to buy this one , —indicating the little piece of mechanism before him , —but he would ' nt sell it for the world . " I worked at it for

years . I helped with my own hands to make it . What could pay me for it ?" " But surely , " I remonstrated , " you could find somebody who would buy the patent and bring out copies of the thing . " " Whom could he trust , " he asked . Before he lost his sight , one man stole his

specifications and tried to bring it out for himself . There was a mistake in them , however , and the man was an ignoramus who could not rectify it , " and so , " he said , "I escaped that time . No , no , Sir . This is the one invention of the world . The solution of

tremendous problems lies here , Sir . I can ' t pursue them now . But I have started them , — -I have started them , —and I shall be remembered . This little machine , Sir , is the key to a new world of discovery . There is an El Dorado of thought opened

by it—a golden world of new knowledge . " There were tears in the blind eyes and on the furrowed cheeks as he said this . We talked a little further . He made

no appeal for help or charity , wretchedly forlorn as his condition was . I left a coin in the hands of the child and bade him good-day , promising to call upon him again . When I reached home I found that my affairs called me to the Continent . I returned to town on the 18 th of May , and in company with a friend sought the