And I sez, “You’ll sup sorrow yet, Josiah Allen, with your tendency to save and scrimp.  Jabez Wind don’t know nothin’ about such work; he hain’t got any shop or tools and I don’t want him meddlin’ round my house.  We want the rooms warmed good and we don’t want a big noise and racket, as I’ve hearn they make sometimes, I couldn’t stand it with such noise and cracklin’ goin’ on day and night.”

“Oh,” sez Josiah, “that’s one great beauty of Jabezeses invention, it is perfectly noiseless, not a murmur or gurgle from one year’s end to the other, and so easy to tend.  Jest twice a year, he sez, to put a pail of water in the upper tank, two pails of water a year to insure summer warmth, no dirt, no noise, not much like luggin’ in wood from mornin’ till night, breakin’ your back cuttin’ and splittin’ it and litterin’ up the house.”

The idee of the perfect stillness did tempt me, I so love comfort and quiet, and also not havin’ to sweep up after chips and kindlin’ wood.  But yet how did we know these things wuz so?  And agin I sez, “How do you know he can do all this?  He hain’t got any tools.”

Sez Josiah, “He’s got idees if he hain’t got tools.  A man can borry tools, but he can’t dicker for such idees as Jabez has got.  See the things he’s undertook.”

Sez I, “Anybody can undertake things; his idees hain’t made him rich or famous.  That air ship of hisen he wuz goin’ to sail to Europe on, rared up and spilt him in his uncle’s back yard.  And his automobile, when he sot off on it and headed it for the road it backed up and took him down that steep hill back of the barn into the creek, where it kep on ploughin’ up dirt and slate stuns till his uncle stopped it by main force and lifted Jabez out from under it drippin’ like a water rat.  And his machine for perpetual motion, his ma uses it now for clothes bars,” sez I.  “What has he ever done to merit your encomiums?”

“Well,” sez he, “he’s bound to succeed this time.  His idees are some like the hardware man’s at Jonesville only Jabez’es are more deep and not nigh so expensive.”  I never liked Jabez Wind and shouldn’t if I’d seen him settin’ swingin’ his legs off the very top of Fame’s pillow.  He wuz oncongenial to me, made so from the beginin’.  I never knew any particular hurt of him, but he seemed so much like his own sir name, so puffed up and onsubstantial.  He wuz middlin’ well off to start with, or his ma wuz, but he had used up all her property in his different enterprises.

Now I dote on inventors, they wear a halo in my partial eyes.  They’re the greatest men of our day, and I mentally kneel at their feet, but gold always has counterfeits.  The real inventor, made by the Deity to carry out his plans, is modest, silent, broodin’ over his great secrets, away from the multitude where angels minister to him.  But Jabez wuz loud, boastin’, arrogant, his pert impudent face proclaimin’ the great things he wuz goin’ to do, but never did.  He wuz in love, too, or what he called love, with a girl that wuz a prime favorite of mine, sweet little Rosamond Nickleson, she and I wuz such great friends she often used to come and stay a week at a time with me.