“I never told you about my brother, the inventor, did I?” asked the Colonel. “Speaking of flying-machines reminds me of him, for he invented seven of them, and one of the lot was a stunning success. Stunned one darky and came very near stunning a whole camp-meeting of darkies. My brother Lije—his name was Elijah—was what you might call a general inventor. He didn’t stick to any one line, such as electricity, for example, but he would invent anything, from a woman’s pocket to a new motive power. He invented a pocket for a woman’s skirt that was warranted never to be found by the most expert pickpocket, and he put the pocket in the skirt of his wife’s dress on trial. She searched for it for about a month—not all the time, you understand, but on an average three or four hours a day—and then gave it up. She said she could always find her usual old-fashioned pocket in the course of a week or ten days, and that was as much time as she could afford to waste on the subject. As for Elijah’s perpetual-motion machines, he invented a new one at least every year, and the loft in our barn was always full of them. Of course they were failures, but that did not discourage Lije. You can’t discourage a born inventor—that is, unless he is in the chemical line and blows himself up with some new kind of dynamite. Lije’s inventions were, to my mind, as smart as those of Edison, but the trouble with them was that for the most part they wouldn’t work. However, they amused him and did no harm to anybody.
“ELIJAH.”
“My brother was not in the least like me in anything. He was short and stout and the best-tempered man in the State. Everybody liked him, especially the darkies, who said that there was no more harm in him than if he was a child. I’ve seen him when he had just accidentally chopped off a finger or had burnt all his hair off, and I never heard him use the smallest swear-word. I never could see why he got married. A man with that sort of heavenly temper doesn’t need the discipline that other folks need, and he was too much absorbed in science to have any time to associate with a wife. He spent nearly all his time in his workshop monkeying with his inventions, and his only companion was a darky boy, about twelve years old, named Aristophanes, who waited on him and was so fond of him that there is nothing that Lije told him to do that Aristophanes wouldn’t do. If Lije had invented a new guillotine and wanted to try it on Aristophanes’ neck, the boy would have consented to have his head chopped off, and would never have doubted that Massa Lije would put it on again without even leaving a scar.
“You were speaking of this new flying-machine that somebody had just invented and that acts on the principle of a kite. ‘Resistance of an inclined plane to the air’ is what you called it, but that means kite, and nothing else. Why, Elijah invented that machine forty years ago, and it was one of his greatest successes, the only one, in fact, that I ever remember his making. When I say that it was successful, I don’t mean to say that it was practicable. It would rise and it would carry a man with it, but it never came into general use, for it was about impossible to get the man down again without killing him. Next to a Swiss excursion steamboat, it was the riskiest mode of locomotion ever invented.
“The way in which Lije’s machine was constructed was very simple. You must have seen what we boys used to call a spider-web kite. If you haven’t, I might as well tell you that it is made with three sticks that cross one another at the same point in about the middle of the kite, or rather a little above the middle, and gave the kite something the shape and look of a big spider-web. Lije was fond of kite-flying, and was always trying to make improvements in kite-building, which were naturally failures, for you can be sure that the millions of boys that have been making kites ever since boys were first invented know a great sight more about kites than any scientific man knows.
“Elijah’s flying-machine was nothing more or less than the biggest spider-web kite that was ever built. The sticks were ash poles an inch in diameter, and they were covered with silk instead of paper. I forget the exact dimensions of the kite, but according to Lije’s calculations it would sustain a hundred and fifty pounds of human being, in addition to its own weight and the weight of its tail. The question of the exact amount of tail that the kite would require gave Lije a good deal of trouble, but he solved it like a man of science by sending up an ordinary kite and finding by experiment how much tail it needed, after which he calculated by the rule of three how much tail to give his flying-machine. In order to get the necessary weight without too great length, the tail of the flying-machine was made of light iron chain, and at the end of it there was an iron hook, so that a lantern could be attached to it at night. As for the string that was to hold the kite, it was about the size of a ship’s signal-halyards, and Lije calculated that it would bear twice the amount of any strain that could possibly be put on it.
“Aristophanes was to make the trial trip, and he was perfectly willing to go, never having the least doubt that Massa Lije would secure him a safe and pleasant trip to the moon or thereabouts. Lije fastened the boy in the centre of the kite, in about the position of some celebrated Scotchman—St. Andrew, wasn’t it?—whose picture is in Fox’s ‘Book of Martyrs.’ Aristophanes’ arms and legs were lashed to the kite sticks, and he had a sort of rest for each foot, so as to take the strain from off the lashings. In order to make him comfortable, Lije fastened a pillow under the boy’s head, so that he could go to sleep in case he should feel sleepy, which he nearly always did. If Aristophanes could only have managed to take his dinner with him and eat it in the air, he would have been about as happy as a darky can be, and an average darky can hold more happiness to the square inch than any white man.
“The trial trip was made from the back yard of our house, and nobody was present except Lije and Aristophanes, for my brother was a little shy of exhibiting his inventions in public, owing to their habit of proving failures. The kite was laid on the ground, and Aristophanes was strapped to it and told that he must keep perfectly cool and remember everything that he might see in the clouds. When all was ready, the kite was leaned up against the side of the barn, with the tail neatly coiled so that it would not foul anything, and then Elijah, taking a good run with the string over his shoulder, had the satisfaction of making the kite climb up as if it had been made by the best boy kite-builder in town.
“Holding the string was rather a tough job, for the kite pulled tremendously, and Lije was not a strong man. However, he paid out the line as fast as he could, and so managed to keep the kite steady. He was a little afraid that it would accidentally get away from him, so he tied the end of the string round his waist. There was where he made his great mistake.
“ELIJAH’S FLYING-MACHINE.”
“The kite attracted a good deal of attention in the town, and everybody agreed that the figure in the middle of the kite was a remarkably good representation of a darky, but nobody thought for a moment that it was a genuine darky. Lije had forgotten, in estimating the amount of tail that the kite required, the fact that the wind might rise while the kite was in the air, and that in such case the amount of tail might not be enough to keep it from diving. That is just what happened. After the kite had run out all the string and was as high as the string would let it go, the wind increased and the kite began to dive. Now, everybody knows that diving is one of the most dangerous things a kite can do, and that unless it can be stopped it is sure to bring the kite down and smash it to pieces. Moreover, in this particular case there was Aristophanes, who was pretty sure to be frightened by the diving of the kite—that is, supposing that he was awake. When a kite dives the only remedy is to give it string. As Lije had no more string to let out he was obliged to do the next best thing, which was to slack the string by running with it toward the kite. That stopped the diving, but only for a moment. Every time that Lije tried to stop running and managed to hold back a little against the kite, it would begin to dive again, and about half the time was describing circles in the air and turning Aristophanes upside down. However, Lije knew that so long as he could keep the kite from dashing itself to the ground the darky would come to no harm.
“The wind kept on increasing and the kite pulled harder than ever. Even if Lije had not wanted to run, the kite would have dragged him. He went through the town at about eight miles an hour, yelling to everybody he met, ‘Gimme some string!’ But nobody understood what he said, and they all thought that it was a good joke to see a fat little man careering over the country in tow of a big kite. Of course they supposed that Lije was acting of his own free will and accord. They knew that he was peculiar in his ways, and they fancied that he was taking a little holiday after his hard work. So beyond encouraging him to keep it up and remarking to one another that ‘Lije was the most amusing darned fool in the county,’ they paid no attention to his outcries.
“My brother was not used to active exercise and had next to no wind. The longer he ran with the kite, the more he felt convinced that a tragedy was about to happen. If he kept on running he believed he would drop dead with stoppage of the heart, and if he stopped running he knew that the kite would dash Aristophanes to pieces; and though, of course, it was not as if Aristophanes had been a white boy, still there was the chance that his parents would be disagreeable if he were killed. They were ordinary ignorant darkies, with no sort of love for science. But Lije had grit in him, in spite of all the science that he had pumped into his head. He stuck to the kite-string, and ran his level best until the moment came when he was unable to catch another breath. Then he threw himself against a telegraph pole and clung to it with all his might. The kite couldn’t drag him away from it, and so it gave one tremendous dive, and Lije felt by the sudden slackening of the string that the kite had reached the ground.
“HIT THE REV. JULIUS CÆSAR WASHINGTON ON THE SIDE OF THE HEAD.”
“It came down in the middle of a negro camp-meeting that was in progress about a quarter of a mile away. The spot was a sandy one, and the kite, which naturally fell head downward, buried the ends of its upper sticks in the sand, and did no injury whatever to Aristophanes. The chain tail, however, damaged the eye of the Rev. Hannibal Blue, and then hit the Rev. Julius Cæsar Washington on the side of the head and stunned him for half an hour. There was a good deal of excitement in the camp when Aristophanes descended. Most of the colored people were of the opinion that he was an angel who had come down to express his satisfaction with the services, though the Rev. Mr. Blue was strongly of the opinion that Aristophanes was the devil in person, who was seeking to buffet the faithful. In time, however, Aristophanes was recognized as the private servant of Massa Lije, and was released from the kite and allowed to return to Lije’s workshop to report the result of his voyage in the flying-machine.
“The flying-machine was never tried again. Lije had had enough of it, and besides, some of the Rev. Mr. Blue’s friends, who were not exactly what you would call law-abiding citizens, sent Lije word that they rather thought that if he quit inventing things he would live longer than he otherwise might. Aristophanes didn’t seem to think anything of his adventure, and said he was ready to go up again whenever Massa Lije should want to send him. But Lije told him that he intended to make a little modification in his flying-machine before using it again. That was what he always said when he gave an invention up as a bad job, and accordingly nobody ever saw or heard of the flying-machine again. He was a remarkable man, was my brother, and the doctor of the asylum where he spent his declining years said that he was the most interesting lunatic that he had ever met.”
