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From my earliest recollection I was moved with a longing desire to learn something of the heavens that surround our world. The sun, and the moon, and the stars, were objects of interest and admiration in my youthful mind. As my eyes were turned upward while lying on the green swathe watching the glittering stars of various colors and dimensions: the involuntary exclamation, of "surely Heaven must be up there" would spring forth! How to get there would then engage my mind for a great part of the night, pondering over the ways and means that might be resorted to in order to attain such a wished for end.

My mother would inform me that I could get there by being good: but then only after death. Now while it was not deemed a hardship to be good, the waiting until death seemed too tedious, besides the uncertainty of dying in the proper faith to insure that most desirable end, only served to make me more desirous of trying it while I had life and strength of which there was a certainty: having become most thoroughly impressed with the philosophy of "a bird in hand being worth two in the bush."

My first attempt was essayed in the construction of a perpetual motion. My father had so far encouraged me in this direction as to assure me that if I succeeded in this invention there would be no trouble in gaining my desired object. He said that would secure me the perpetual motive power of travel without the ponderous necessity of carrying wood and water, and that motion once attained would also serve to keep up the vitality of the nervous system without the old fashioned method of using bread and butter. This seemed very encouraging, and now my mind was bent towards such an invention. 

Certainly, I whispered to myself, there are such things in nature- the world turns round and round, and moves forward in the vast space of ether, and it has no journals and boxes on which to revolve, and besides, it has no rails or platforms to roll on in its progress, although it makes good time - not less than 68,000 miles an hour. The first practical idea suggesting itself

Transcription Notes:
Swathe = a long strip or large area especially of land