The Little City of Hope | Page 2

in an interval between the dull speeches, one
of the three told the others that he had looked into the invention and
that there was nothing in Overholt's motor after all. Overholt was crazy.
"It's like this," he had said. "You know how a low-pressure engine acts;
the steam does a part of the work and the weight of the atmosphere
does the rest. Now this man Overholt thinks he can make the
atmosphere do both parts of the work with no steam at all, and as that's
absurd, of course, he won't get any more of my money. It's like getting
into a basket and trying to lift yourself up by the handles."
Each of the two hearers repeated this simple demonstration to at least a
dozen acquaintances, who repeated it to dozens of others; and after that
John Henry Overholt could not raise another dollar to complete the

Air-Motor.
Mr. Burnside's refusal had been definite and final, and he had been the
last to whom the investor had applied, merely because he was
undoubtedly the most close-fisted man of business of all who had
invested in the invention.
Overholt saw failure before him at the very moment of success, with
the not quite indifferent accompaniment of starvation. Many a man as
good as he has been in the same straits, even more than once in life, and
has succeeded after all, and Overholt knew this quite well, and
therefore did not break down, nor despair, nor even show distinct
outward signs of mental distress.
Metaphorically, he took Pandora's box to the Park, put it in a sunny
corner, and sat upon it, to keep the lid down, with Hope inside, while
he thought over the situation.
It was not at all a pleasant one. It is one thing to have no money to
spare, but it is quite another to have none at all, and he was not far from
that. He had some small possessions, but those with which he was
willing to part were worth nothing, and those which would bring a little
money were the expensive tools and valuable materials with which he
was working. For he worked alone, profiting by his experience with the
mechanic who had robbed him of one of his most profitable patents.
When the idea of the Air-Motor had occurred to him he had gone into a
machine-shop and had spent nearly two years in learning the use of fine
tools. Then he had bought what he needed out of the money invested in
his idea, and had gone to work himself, sending models of such
castings as he required to different parts of the United States, that the
pieces might be made independently.
He was not an accomplished workman, and he made slow progress
with only his little son to help him when the boy was not at school.
Often, through lack of skill, he wasted good material, and more than
once he spoiled an expensive casting, and was obliged to wait till it
could be made again and sent to him. Besides, he and the boy had to
live, and living is dear nowadays, even in a cottage in an
out-of-the-way corner of Connecticut; and he needed fire and light in
abundance for his work, besides something to eat and decent clothes to
wear and somebody to cook the dinner; and when he took out his diary
note-book and examined the figures on the page near the end, headed

"Cash Account, November," he made out that he had three hundred and
eighteen dollars and twelve cents to his credit, and nothing to come
after that, and he knew that the men who had believed in him had
invested, amongst them, ten thousand dollars in shares, and had paid
him the money in cash in the course of the past three years, but would
invest no more; and it was all gone.
One thousand more, clear of living expenses, would do it. He was
positively sure that it would be enough, and he and the boy could live
on his little cash balance, by great economy, for four months, at the end
of which time the Air-Motor would be perfected. But without the
thousand the end of the four months would be the end of everything
that was worth while in life. After that he would have to go back to
teaching in order to live, and the invention would be lost, for the work
needed all his time and thought.
He was a mathematician, and a very good one, besides being otherwise
a man of cultivated mind and wide reading. Unfortunately for himself,
or the contrary, if the invention ever succeeded, he had given himself
up to higher mathematics when a young man, instead of turning his
talent to account