Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/70

 catastrophe, Henry Ford turned and hurried back to make those purchases. Aided by a sympathetic clerk at the ribbon counter, he completed them satisfactorily, and came out of the store, laden with bundles, just at the moment that Detroit's pride, a new steam-propelled fire engine, came puffing around the corner.

It was going at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, with impressive clatter and clang, pouring clouds of black smoke from the stack. Detroit's citizens crowded the sidewalks to view it as it went by. Henry Ford, gripping his bundles, stood on the curb and looked at it. Here was his first chance to see a steam engine built to run without a prepared roadbed and rails.

It was the original of one of those pictures we sometimes see now with a smile, murmuring, "How quaint!" A huge round boiler, standing high in the back, supplied fully half its bulk. Ford made a hasty calculation of the probable weight of water it carried, in proportion to its power.

The result appalled him. He thoughtfully watched the engine until it was out of sight. Then he resumed his way home. On the train he sat in deep thought, now and then figuring a little on the back of an old envelope.

"I couldn't get that steam engine out of my mind," he says. "What an awful waste of power! The weight of the water in that boiler bothered me for weeks."