When Wesley Tiffles had spent ten thousand dollars in elegant leisure, he arrived at the noble determination to “salt down,” as he called it, the remaining ten thousand dollars, in ten different savings banks.  He distributed it thus, in order that the failure of one of the banks might not ruin him.  The interest of this money, drawn half-yearly, furnished him with a basis for operations of a character requiring genius, pens, ink, and paper, rather than ready cash.  Whenever Tiffles’s resources ran short, as they did occasionally, he always borrowed, and paid on the next interest day.  In this policy he was inflexible; and he flattered himself on the sternness of his self-denial.

Among the schemes which failed to receive the cordial approbation of capitalists, were the following:  “A process for extracting green paint from green leaves;” ditto for “making nutritious food from the direct combination of earth, air, and water;” a plan (submitted to the unappreciating Government of Naples) to “extinguish the volcano of Vesuvius, by pumping water from the Bay into the crater, in consideration of the sum of one million florins, and a monopoly of working the extinct volcano for lava.”

Wesley Tiffles, profiting, at a late day, by the lesson of the “Cosmopolitan Window Fastener,” finally invented and patented a striking improvement in an apple-paring machine, and, at last accounts, was clenching a good bargain for the sale of his invention.