day of his sudden and untimely death prepared a long and elaborate list of benefactions, disposing of everything from his new invention for making clay marbles [1] to a box-kite
- ↑ The following is a partial list of Lonely's several inventions:
An improved water-wheel, to be used for operating churns, sewing-machines, etc. The power was usually carried in through an open window, by means of a light clothes-line, running rather spasmodically over many spool-pulleys. When not attached to anything, both water-wheel and power-line and spool-pulleys spun and rattled away bravely enough; but the invention was never seriously adopted by purblindly conservative grown-ups, so was diverted to rotating a home-made wind-mill which otherwise refused to turn without the aid of water and wind combined. A pair of flannel shoes for Stumpy, Annie Eliza's lame hen, deprived of her toes through frost-bite. While usually placid and companionable. Stumpy, when shod, undeviatingly hid in the lilac bushes and sulked.
An Eolipile motor, made of two oil-cans mounted on trunnions, with a small boiler attached. Though of no great industrial value. Lonely took the greatest pride in this little engine, in which he imagined lay embodied some key to the reformation of all steam power. His sorrow knew no bounds, accordingly, when he discovered that a scribe named Hero of Alexandria had minutely described his engine, one hundred and fifty years before the Christian Era.
A dog-harness and cultivator, to expedite the hoeing and weeding of kitchen-gardens, etc. As no dogs sufficiently
