"I had gone to take a walk," he said, "on a fine Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street, and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that, as steam was an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum, and, if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder."
He had found it! Before he had crossed the Green, he added, "the whole thing was arranged in my mind." Since that memorable day the invention has been ever growing; for, as Professor Thurston well remarks: "Great inventions are never the work of any one mind." From Hero to Corliss is a stretch of nearly twenty centuries; during which, probably, a thousand inventive minds have contributed to make the steam-engine the exquisite thing it is to-day.
AN OLD DRY-GOODS MERCHANT'S RECOLLECTIONS.
Our great cities have a new wonder of late years. I mean those immense dry-goods stores which we see in Paris, London, New York, Vienna, Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago, in which are displayed under one roof almost all the things worn, or used for domestic purposes, by man, woman, or child.
What a splendid and cheering spectacle the interior presents on a fine, bright day! The counters a tossing sea of brilliant fabrics; crowds of ladies moving in all directions; the clerks, well-dressed and polite, exhibiting their goods; the cash-boys flying about with money in one hand and a bundle in the other; customers streaming in at every door; and customers passing out, with the satisfied air of people who have got what they want. It gives the visitor a cheerful idea of abundance to see such a provision of comfortable and pleasant things brought from every quarter of the globe.
An old dry-goods merchant of London, now nearly ninety, and long ago retired from business with a large fortune, has given his recollections of business in the good old times. There is a periodical, called the "Draper's Magazine," devoted to the dry-goods business, and it is in this that some months ago he told his story.
When he was a few months past thirteen, being stout and large for his age, he was placed in a London dry-goods store, as boy of all work. No wages were given him. At that time the clerks in stores usually boarded with their employer. On the first night of his service, when it was time to go to bed, he was shown a low, truckle bedstead, under the counter, made to pull out and push in. He did not have even this poor bed to himself, but shared it with another boy in the store. On getting up in the morning, instead of washing and dressing for the day, he was obliged to put on some old clothes, take down the shutters of the store,—which were so heavy he could hardly carry them,—then clean the brass signs and the outside of the shop windows, leaving the inside to be washed by the older clerks. When he had done this, he was allowed to go up stairs, wash himself, dress for the day, and to eat his breakfast. Then he took his place behind the counter.
We think it wrong for boys under fourteen to work ten hours a day. But in the stores of the olden time, both boys and men worked from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and nothing was thought of it. This store, for example, was opened soon after eight in the morning, and the shutters were not put up till ten in the evening. There was much work to do after the store was closed; and the young men, in fact, were usually released from labor about a quarter past eleven. On Saturday nights the store closed at twelve o'clock, and it was not uncommon for the young men to be employed in putting away the goods until between two and three on Sunday morning.