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[Illustration: PATENT GRANTED TO THE AUTHOR]
_WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS AND DIAGRAMS_
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1916, by_ FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
TO JOHN ROLLER COLLINS A THINKER OF THOUGHTS NEW AND NOVEL
And since you are a boy it follows as the night the day that you have your share of inventive ability and you ought to make good use of it.
To find out some new way of making or doing a thing--for this is what inventing means--is the most fascinating game that I know of to take up a fellow’s time and thought and energy.
You may say how about wireless, or star-gazing, or baseball, or shooting, or chess, or any one of a dozen other pastimes and sports and I shall be bound to admit that all of them are highly entertaining and some of them instructive but inventing is all that the others are and besides it is _constructive_ while they are not.
By constructive I mean that you take an idea that had its origin in your brain and this vague, intangible conception, which takes up no space, has no weight and is not bound by time, you build up step by step of wood and steel and like materials until at last you have created something out of nothing, or as nearly as it can be done.
To watch your invention grow, especially if you build it with your own hands, from the time you make the first rough sketch of your idea until it stands completed and in working order, gives you a wonderful feeling of pride and satisfaction for you are the _creator_ of it and this means that you are more than a mere boy, greater than an ordinary man--that you are in very truth a _demi-god_.
These are the real pleasures of inventing but to make a success of it you have to drop back to earth again and take up the mean, the sordid part, and that is to try to make money out of it. And if you have an invention of merit you will have to forget that you are a demi-god and become a hard and fast mortal again or it will not be long before some other body owns it lock, barrel and stock; and then you will have a chance to start another idea rolling and to build up another invention.