plete rifle. To make 10,000 rifles would, therefore, require 240,000 working hours, or 30,000 working days of eight hours each. On account of the size of the present Armory it would, of course, not be economical to work as few as 100 men. The smallest economical working force for this plant would be 600 men; they would make 10,000 rifles in 50 working days. It would take 100 men at least two years to make 10,000 rifles. The Springfield Armory has a plant capable of manufacturing 10,000 rifles in less than seven days, working double shifts if the necessity should arise.

"The musket manufactured by Whitney under his contract of January, 1798, was a flint-lock, 591⁄2 inches long, .69-inch caliber, had about 45 component parts, and fired a round bullet of one ounce, at a muzzle velocity of 800 feet per second; while the latest Springfield rifle is a magazine rifle 43.2 inches long, .30-inch caliber, has 105 component parts, fires an elongated and sharp-pointed jacketed bullet weighing 150 grains, less than one-third of an ounce, at a muzzle velocity of 2,700 feet per second."

In 1812, Whitney was awarded a further contract by the War Department, this time for 15,000 stands of arms. Then followed contracts with the State of New York, and with leading firms throughout the Union. His system was constantly extended and improved, so that he earned an ample competence, as he had hoped at the outset. He was now sure that he could safely incur the responsibilities of matrimony. In 1816, he became engaged to Miss Henrietta Edwards, a daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards. They were married in the following January, a son and three daughters being born to their union. But the happiness of the great inventor was to be brief. His repeated journeys between North and South, taken, as they were, in an open vehicle, and often at inclement seasons, had impaired a frame naturally rugged. In the course of 1824 he developed a distressing malady, which ended his life on January 8, 1825, shortly after he had completed his fiftyninth year. His conduct as a patient was in line with his

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career as an inventor. He inquired minutely into the causes and progress of his disease, examining charts of anatomy by the hour. In the intervals between his paroxysms of agony, he devised surgical instruments for the relief of himself and of others in like extremity. Eli Whitney, in his years of vigor, had created for his fellowmen benefits beyond computation: under the shadow of death he sought to subtract from their pain. He had planned a new mansion for himself and his family: he requested that it be duly reared after his death.

What manner of man was Eli Whitney, as in health and strength he strode across the Green in New Haven? Like George Stephenson, he was cast in a large mold, and stood head and shoulders above ordinary folk. He was a kindly man, whose friendships were warm and clinging: his hand never relaxed its grasp of the chums of his youth. Many a man is honest: this man was scrupulously honorable: it was his fate often to be scurvily treated, and then his resentment made him terrible. His chief faculty, of course, was invention, his ability to strike a new path out of an old difficulty. This talent was not confined within the walls of his factory. Every building he reared, and these included dwellings for his work people, bore the marks of his original brain. He used cement liberally for foundations and walls, with prophecy of its wider applications today. The drawers of his desk were fastened by a single lock, in a fashion now usual. Even the mangers for his cattle were improved at his hands. He placed a small weight at the end of each halter, so that its wearer could move its head with ease, and yet could neither entangle itself in its rope, nor waste its hay.

His judgments were slowly matured: they were never expressed before they were ripe. In experiment, in his quest for materials, in his choice of lieutenants, he was patience itself. He could plant to-day, and for ten years

calmly await his harvest. Unlike most inventors, whatever he began he finished. New projects beckoned to him in vain, so long as unfinished work remained on his hands. The unflinching will of the man revealed itself in the hour of death, as his tremulous fingers were lifted to close his eyes.

THOMAS BLANCHARD

SEVENTY years ago a great triumvirate, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, were the idols of America. Their portraits adorned parlors and offices, courtrooms and capitols, from one end of the Union to the other. Here and there an admirer, more prosperous than his neighbors, had a bust of one of these worthies on his mantelpiece. The continuing remembrance of these great leaders is due in no small measure to the thousands of pictures and effigies thus set up throughout the country, and still to be found in many a farmhouse and mansion of South Carolina, Kentucky, and New Hampshire. We may feel certain that all three statesmen grew at last thoroughly tired of posing to artists, so that they rejoiced at a reprieve, at least so far as sculptors were concerned. This was promised one morning in 1840, as Clay, Calhoun, and Webster were invited to view busts of themselves copied in wood by a cheap and simple process. These figures, beautifully executed, awaited them on a table in the rotunda of the Capitol. Beside them stood Thomas Blanchard, who seemed truth incarnate, so transparent was his eye, so straightforward his speech. Yet he said that these admirable busts had been carved on a lathe of his invention almost as readily as so many gunstocks. This machine he had invented and patented long ago, but only that year had he built it on lines delicate enough to reproduce statuary. Its chief business, indeed, had been to shape stocks for guns, handles for tools, lasts for shoes, and tackle for ships. Pirates had been so numerous and active a band, that this wonderful machine had brought its inventor but little reward. He had, therefore, come to Washington to ask from Congress a favor without precedent,—