ul.

Mrs. Joslyn sighed. She knew remonstrance was useless so long as her
husband encouraged the boy, and that she would be wise to bear her
cross with fortitude.

Rob also knew his mother's protests would be of no avail; so he
continued to revel in electrical processes of all sorts, using the
house as an experimental station to test the powers of his productions.

It was in his own room, however,--his "workshop"--that he especially
delighted. For not only was it the center of all his numerous "lines"
throughout the house, but he had rigged up therein a wonderful array of
devices for his own amusement. A trolley-car moved around a circular
track and stopped regularly at all stations; an engine and train of
cars moved jerkily up and down a steep grade and through a tunnel; a
windmill was busily pumping water from the dishpan into the copper
skillet; a sawmill was in full operation and a host of mechanical
blacksmiths, scissors-grinders, carpenters, wood-choppers and millers
were connected with a motor which kept them working away at their
trades in awkward but persevering fashion.

The room was crossed and recrossed with wires. They crept up the
walls, lined the floor, made a grille of the ceiling and would catch an
unwary visitor under the chin or above the ankle just when he least
expected it. Yet visitors were forbidden in so crowded a room, and
even his father declined to go farther than the doorway. As for Rob,
he thought he knew all about the wires, and what each one was for; but
they puzzled even him, at times, and he was often perplexed to know how
to utilize them all.

One day when he had locked himself in to avoid interruption while he
planned the electrical illumination of a gorgeous pasteboard palace, he
really became confused over the network of wires. He had a
"switchboard," to be sure, where he could make and break connections as
he chose; but the wires had somehow become mixed, and he could not tell
what combinations to use to throw the power on to his miniature
electric lights.

So he experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and
that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike
the right combination. Then he thought the combination might be right
and there was a lack of power; so he added other lines of wire to his
connections, and still others, until he had employed almost every wire
in the room.

Yet it would not work; and after pausing a moment to