d in a mood of reckless
generosity he promised us all shares, which certainly tended to deepen
our interest in the invention. Then he betook himself to the Patent
Office.

I saw him the following day, and it occurred to me at once that all was
not well with William. For one thing he did not burst in unannounced
with hair dishevelled, which seems to be the usual way for an inventor
to come into a room; he entered slowly and sat down heavily.

'Is anything wrong with the invention?' I asked.

He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. A metal disc fell
out and rolled unheeded across the floor.

'Nothing is wrong with it,' he answered dully.

'You don't mean that some one else has thought of It before you?'

'Most people seem to have thought of It.' He paused and absently
plucked off a stray piece of rubber from his coat sleeve. 'It seems to
have originated in America in 1880. Then a large colony of German
inventors applied for the patent; a body of Russians were imbued with
the idea; several Scandinavians had variations of it. It even seems to
have filtered into the brain of certain West African tribes; and in
1918 a Czecho-Slovak----' He paused, overcome with emotion.

'But if It is a thing man can't do without, why haven't we heard of
it?' I demanded.

'Men,' replied William sadly, seem determined to do without It. They
don't know what is good for them.'

Suddenly he raised his head with the light of enthusiasm in his eyes.
'By the way, I was talking to a chap at the Patent Office who told me
that there's an enormous boom in inventing in this country just now.
Henry ought to get a good article out of it.'

As a matter of fact it was the only thing that ever was got out of the
invention.

William, being an Irishman, didn't let failure depress him in the
least. We were all glad to see him rational again--as rational as
could be expected from him, I mean. As Elizabeth was wont to express
it, ''E aint screwed up like other folk, so what can you expect.' But
as I have said, she did not approve of William. It was not so much
that she took exception to the trail of tobacco ash that followed in
his wake, or the unusual litter he created during his inventive period.
She resented the fact that he was unmarried, having, at all times, a
strong objection to celibacy.

'When a man gets to the age o' that there Mr. Roarings' (William's
surname is Rawlings, so she didn't get so far out for her)--'a