not stop until it flew into pieces of its own velocity; therefore one must have an open space about it so that no one might be injured by the flying fragments. With his brother-in-law, Colonel John Shane, he waited behind a tree for the machine to fly to bits. It revolved a few times and presently came to an abrupt halt. No fragments flew through space. The machine was a failure.
It is standing there to-day, in the midst of a field now cultivated by Bohemian immigrants. It is too bulky to be moved. It remains, like a gigantic rock, in the midst of waving corn, the single monument to Samuel Barr's inventive genius. The other things,—the cash-carrier, the patent rocker, the synthetic whalebone have survived. With a few variations they whiz coins through gigantic department stores in a hundred cities; they support the tired backs of a million exhausted housewives; and they enclose the swelling forms of even more millions of too plump women. But Samuel Barr made no money out of these things. Others made the money and stole the credit. It was the perpetual motion machine which was the apple of his eye, the great creative effort of his soul. No one wanted that, so no one stole it from him. It remained, the single possession of his trusting soul. The weather is eating it slowly away. Sometimes people stop along the road and walk into the field to regard the strange Gargantuan engine. "Sam Barr's Perpetual Motion Machine" exists, the only monument to his name.
Samuel Barr is important to this tale because it was he who founded Harvey Seton's fortune, and because it was his machine which stands as a superb symbol for the taint which ran through all his family. It was the taint of a family of great energy which had fantastic visions, which gambled high, staking everything to win or lose. It was a curious taint, rare and unhappy, but out of it there sometimes rose a sudden genius—an artist, an adventurer, a philosopher, an inventor. The taint was in all of them. His sister Julia risked her fortune a dozen times and, winning, increased it a dozen times. His niece Hattie Tolliver never ceased
