Howe's
poverty inclined him to listen to these remarks with great interest. No
man needed money more than he, and he was confident that his mechanical
skill was of an order which made him as competent as any one else to
achieve the task proposed. He set to work to accomplish it, and, as he
knew well the dangers which surround an inventor, kept his own counsel.
At his daily labor, in all his waking hours, and even in his dreams, he
brooded over this invention. He spent many a wakeful night in these
meditations, and his health was far from being benefited by this severe
mental application. Success is not easily won in any great undertaking,
and Elias Howe found that he had entered upon a task which required the
greatest patience, perseverance, energy, and hopefulness. He watched his
wife as she sewed, and his first effort was to devise a machine which
should do what she was doing. He made a needle pointed at both ends,
with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the
cloth, and carry the thread through at each thrust; but his elaboration
of this conception would not work satisfactorily.
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