“Worse than all, when I came to read over my paper, I found, by the errors of the press, that the whole diagram was spoiled. The letters had been misplaced, and the fiend himself, if he wanted it, couldn't work my pump. You see that C D represented the angular crank, F was the stop-cock, and T the trigger that closed the piston. Hang me, if they did n't make F the trigger, and instead of B being the cistern, it was made the jet; so that when you began to work, all the water squirted through the sluices at OPQ over the operator. I went nearly mad. I wrote a furious letter to the editor; I wrote another to the 'Times;' I wrote to the 'Globe,' the 'Post,' and the 'Herald.' I explained, I elucidated, I asked for the Englishman's birthright, as they call it—'Justice'—but no use! In fact, my reclamations could only be inserted as advertisements, and would cost me about a hundred pounds to publish. So I sat down to grieve over my invention, and curse the hour I ever thought of serving my country.
“It was about six months after this—I had been living on some relations nearly as poor as myself—when I one day received an order to 'wait at the Admiralty the next morning.' I went, but without hope or interest. I could n't guess why I was sent for, but no touch of expectancy made me anxious for the result.
“I waited from eleven till four in the ante-room; and at last, after some fifty had had audiences, Lieutenant Sickleton was called. The time was I would have trembled at such an interview to the very marrow of my bones. Disappointment, however, had nerved me now, and I stood as much at ease and composed as I sit here.
“'You are Mr. Sickleton?' said the First Lord, who was a 'Tartar.'
“'Yes, my Lord.'
“'You invented a kind of pump—a hand-pump for launches and small craft, I think?'
“'Yes, my Lord.'
“'You have a model of the invention, too?'
“'Yes, my Lord.'
“'Can you describe the principle of your discovery? is there anything which, for its novelty, demands the peculiar attention of the Admiralty?'