torn loose from them and they slide down and out of the way. As the
wheel turns round with its teeth full of cotton lint, a revolving brush
sweeps it away so that the teeth are cleaned and ready to take up more
lint. A simple principle, you may say, but it took a good head to think
it out, and to it we owe the famous cotton industry of the South.

But poor Whitney did not get the good from his invention that he
deserved, for a terrible misfortune happened to him. Many people came to
see the invention, but he kept the workshop locked, for he did not want
strangers to see it till he had it finished and his patent granted. The
end was, that one night some thieves broke into the shop and stole the
model, and there were some machines made and in operation before the
poor inventor could make another model and secure his patent.

This is only one of the instances in which an inventor has been robbed
of the work of his brain, and others have grown rich by it, while he
has had trouble to make a living. A Mr. Miller, who afterward married
Mrs. Greene, went into partnership with Whitney, and supplied him with
funds, and he got out a patent in 1794. But the demand for the machines
was so great that he could not begin to supply them, and the pirated
machines, though they were much inferior to his perfected ones, were
eagerly bought. Then his shop burned with all its contents, and that
made him a bankrupt.

For years after that Whitney sought to obtain justice. In some of the
States he was fairly treated and in others he was not, and in 1812
Congress refused to renew the patent, and the field was thrown open for
everybody to make the machines. Nearly all he ever got for his invention
was fifty thousand dollars paid him by the Legislature of South
Carolina.

In later years Whitney began to make fire-arms for the government, and
he was so successful in this that he grew rich, while he greatly
improved the machinery and methods. It was he who first began to make
each part separately, so it would fit in any gun, a system now used in
all branches of manufacture. As for the cotton industry, to which Eli
Whitney gave the first great start, it will suffice to say that its
product has grown from less than one thousand bales, when he began his
work, to over ten million bales a year.

_HOW OLD HICKORY FOUGHT THE CREEKS._

Shall we seek to picture to our readers a scene in the streets of
Nashville, Tennessee, less than a century a