Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/491

Rh, a man sometimes received one bushel in ten for thrashing, ami from ten to twenty bushels must have been a day's work.

Now a machine will thrash out hundreds of bushels in a day, at an expense of a very few cents a bushel.

Inventions have changed the meaning of words. When I was a boy, a reaper was a man who reaped grain with a sickle, and a thrasher was one who thrashed it with a flail. Now, reapers and thrashers are machines driven by steam or horse-power.

For what part of our daily bread are we not indebted to inventions? Some of the fruits of the earth we eat as Nature gives them to us, but how much even of them do we take directly from the tree or shrub or plant which produced it, and eat without the aid of invention?

All our animal food comes within our reach and is prepared for use only by the aid of inventions.

I looks and nets and spears give us all we have of fish. The fishhook is a very simple contrivance. Is it a great invention or a small one? If the fish-hooks should all be suddenly destroyed, together with the ability to make them, would not the loss of the invention be a greater calamity than any which has befallen the world for a thousand years? If so, were not the inventors of that instrument, and those who have improved it, real benefactors to the world?

Could we get along without needles? Could we give up pins without a sigh? Are knives and forks and spoons a necessity? They are all among the simplest things that man makes, yet he has not obtained them without a great deal of mental labor; without the exercise of powers of invention of a high order.

It is less than fifty years since the little articles called matches have come into use. They are now so common and so cheap that we use them almost as we do air and water, without thinking at all of their real value. How few there are of us who do not use them every day, and many times a day, and how inconvenient it would be not to have them! But, when I was a boy, nobody had them; nobody could have them, for they did not exist. In the country-houses, at least, the greatest care was exercised not to let the fire go out upon the hearth, because in such case it became necessary to send to a neighbor's, often at a distance, for a fresh brand. Every night the live coals upon the hearth were carefully buried in the ashes to preserve them alive for the morning. In spite of this precaution, the fire was often lost. I have been sent many a time, in such cases, to a neighbor's in a cold morning to get a burning brand to start the fire at home anew. Nobody now thinks of taking any pains to preserve a fire, for it is easier to start a new one with a match than to preserve an old one. A very common way of lighting a candle in the house when darkness came on was to take, with the tongs, a coal from the fire—wood-fires were then used—and blow it, applying the wick of the candle to it at the same time. Sometimes it could be lighted very readily, but oftentimes it