Next consider the human being,—the big, brown-eyed, white-bearded man, over sixty years young,—for he was born in Maine, in 1840.
He seems to me to be a man with two ambitions: primarily, to keep on inventing, and, secondarily, to be the most famous inventor of all ages. His intellect and energy demand progress, his vanity demands fame. He doesn’t appear to care for money, save as a means to a desired end. His personality might be considered unbalanced. His sense of self-suppression does not correspond with his fairly colossal intellect. The character of his intellectuality is uniform. The philosophical rather than the scholarly instinct dominates it. Another evidence of his quality of humanity is his sensitiveness to unfair censure. “I don’t fear truthful criticism,” he once said; “misrepresentation is what hurts.”
It is difficult for one who knows him to imagine anything which he could not master. I once asked him the question, and he said he believed he would have succeeded at anything, except as a clergyman or a physician; that his religious views would preclude the former, and that he had a distaste for the latter.
BITING OFF THE DOG’S TAIL.
At the age of fourteen young Maxim left school, and became apprenticed to a carriage-builder, although he had previously learned the use of tools in his father’s mill. He was a stockily built lad, and was noted for his physical strength and daring. His father was not an ardent advocate of “turn the other cheek” policy. On the contrary, he used to say: “If any one assails you, sail into him.” Once Hiram’s father promised to bring him a present if he would be good. The little fellow, then six years old, looked forward to the fulfilment with impatience. At length, the elder Maxim, returning from the village, brought a puppy as a playmate for his little son. Hiram regarded the animal with amazement for a few moments; then, bursting into tears, he rushed to hide his face in his mother’s lap, exclaiming: “I am afraid of it, it looks so much like a dog.” The two finally became great friends. One day the dog bit Hiram, and the lad asked his father what he ought to do under the circumstances. “Bite him back,” was the verdict. In pursuit of this suggestion, the lad examined the dog and concluded that the end of his tail was about the most vulnerable point. Accordingly, he took that member between his teeth and began to put on pressure, raising the dog from the ground, in order to swing him once or twice. All the while the lad had tears in his eyes, for he loved his little play-fellow; but, with true Puritanical instinct, he deemed the chastisement just and necessary. The dog, however, did not join him in this view of the matter, and, in an attempt to escape, carried away one of his young master’s upper front teeth. It is also said that one of Hiram’s young brothers, in pursuit of this policy of retaliation, almost decapitated the family goose, which they were saving up for Christmas, which had savagely attacked the calf of the youngster’s leg.
It is easier to give Mr. Maxim’s manner of speech than his manner of speaking. He has wonderful brown eyes,—very honest eyes,—that stare at you inquiringly as he talks, and an extremely gentle voice of an almost hypnotic quality,—very attractive and soothing. Marvelously quick-witted himself, he has little patience with dullness in others. His power of explanation, too, is very great. He always uses language and methods according to the understanding of the listener. With a scientific man, he employs forms of speech that convey much in little, while to the ordinary layman he expresses himself in popular English.
“To what do you attribute your early success?” Mr. Maxim was asked.
“In the first place, I was a very large and strong boy, and, no matter where I worked, I always succeeded in doing more than any other man or boy in the shop. I was never absent from work or school.”
PAT’S ANXIETY TO TRY “THE BOSS,” AND ITS RESULT.
The development of his physical strength kept pace with that of his intellect. When he was thirty-five, he was manager of a large manufactory in Brooklyn. One day a herculean Irishman, who had long been ambitious to have a trial of strength with “the boss,” asked the latter how it was that the Irish were so much stronger than the Americans.