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to my mind was, to accomplish it by manual strength. I found that I could lift up a boy as heavy as myself in a wash-tub, and carry tub and boy to and fro. It seemed quite rational to me, that if I could carry a boy as big as myself in a tub, I should be able to carry myself about in the [[strikethrough]] tub [[/strikethrough]] the same manner. My first trial seemed like a partial success, because I managed to get my humble chariot across the room. Having failed however, in getting it entirely clear of the ground, and also finding the labor of working it growing tedious and laborious I gave up that idea. I had made all my experiments with the tub quite secretly, and had two reasons for doing so. The first of these was, that I wanted to be ready with my new discovery before any body else should know it. The second was, that I had some misgivings of its success so as to be useful in the attainment of my wishes. I next betook myself to the construction of wheels and levers. With a wheel of considerable dimensions, so arranged that a heavy iron ball placed near the hub would roll out to the rim on the hollowed spoke, it would give considerable impulse to the revolution of the wheel, and it wanted only a trifle of additional power to bring up above the dead level on the otherside. I worked and studied, and studied and worked, for more than two years to overcome this trifling uncertainty, but found in the end that it would not amount to much, even should I succeed in overcoming this trifle, insasmuch as it would amount to only a trifling gain at best, and so I laid over that project. During all this time I was not absent from school, and an old fashioned Domini had taken particular pains in impressing our youthful minds with the laws of compensation, and that action and reaction was always the same. From this I deduced, as did several of my colleagues, that if such was the law, it should follow as a sequence, that the very next time the Domini whacked his hicory [[hickory]] across our backs, we must wrench the hicory from his hand and make it react over his
Transcription Notes:
hickory in two spaces for "hicory"