Harper's Round Table, July 2, 1895 - LightNovelsOnl.com
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"No," said Tommy, wondering what his aunt would say next.
"They had quite a little tiff. Jefferson, you see, wanted to have it written on a typewriter, and--"
"But, Aunt, the typewriter wasn't invented then."
"That's just what Charles Carroll of Carrollton told him. But Jefferson insisted on calling in the janitor, and having it invented while they waited. 'Posterity can never read my handwriting,' said Jefferson.
'Besides, my fountain-pen won't work to-day; you know how it is with these fountain-pens--some days ink will shoot out of them like water out of a garden hose, and other times you can't get it out with a corkscrew.'"
"Why didn't Charles Carroll of Carrollton tell Jefferson that fountain-pens weren't invented either?" asked Tommy.
"I don't think he knew it. A great many people then thought that fountain-pens were invented. And then they talked a long time, and Thomas Jefferson tried to get Benjamin Franklin to set it up in type and print it, but he said he had to go fis.h.i.+ng with his kite that afternoon for electricity and so couldn't; and then the others sided in with Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Jefferson had to write it after all, with a quill pen, and with sand to dry the ink with instead of blotting-paper, because the man who had promised to invent blotting-paper had joined the army and gone off to fight the British. So you see, Tommy, the men that wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence had their troubles. But you ought to be thankful that they did it in July instead of January."
Tommy thought a moment, and then said, "Yes, I am; but if they'd done it about six weeks earlier it would have given us a holiday while there was school, and _I_ think that's a pretty good time for holidays."
A GRAND DISPLAY.
When I witness the destruction of famed cities of the past Reproduced in pyrotechnics on a scale superb and vast, How their ineffectual fires pale in potent power to charm Before that dollar-twelve a.s.sortment dad once set off at the farm!
