A POOR MAN'S TALE OF A PATENT.

I AM not used to writing for print. What
working-man that never labours less (some
Mondays, and Christmas Time and Easter
Time, excepted) than twelve or fourteen
hour a day, is? But I have been asked to
put down, plain, what I have got to say; and
so I take pen-and-ink, and do it to the best of
my power, hoping defects will find excuse.

I was born, nigh London, but have worked
in a shop at Birmingham (what you would
call Manufactories, we call Shops), almost ever
since I was out of my time. I served my
apprenticeship at Deptford, nigh where I was
born, and I am a smith by trade. My name
is John. I have been called "Old John"
ever since I was nineteen year of age, on
account of not having much hair. I am fifty-
six year of age at the present time, and I
don't find myself with more hair, nor yet
with less, to signify, than at nineteen year of
age aforesaid.

I have been married five and thirty year,
come next April. I was married on All
Fools' Day. Let them laugh that win. I
won a good wife that day, and it was as
sensible a day to me, as ever I had.

We have had a matter of ten children, six
whereof are living. My eldest son is engineer
in the Italian steam-packet "Mezzo Giorno,
plying between Marseilles and Naples, and
calling at Genoa, Leghorn, and Civita
Vecchia." He was a good workman. He
invented a many useful little things that
brought him in—nothing. I have two sons
doing well at Sydney, New South Wales—
single, when last heard from. One of my
sons (James) went wild and for a soldier,
where he was shot in India, living six weeks
in hospital with a musket ball lodged in his
shoulder-blade, which he wrote with his own
hand. He was the best looking. One of my
two daughters (Mary) is comfortable in her
circumstances, but water on the chest. The
other (Charlotte), her husband run away
from her in the basest manner, and she and
her three children live with us. The
youngest, six year old, has a turn for
mechanics.

I am not a Chartist, and I never was. I
don't mean to say but what I see a good
many public points to complain of, still I
don't think that's the way to set them right.
If I did think so, I should be a Chartist.
But I don't think so, and I am not a Chartist.
I read the paper, and hear discussion, at what
we call "a parlor" in Birmingham, and I
know many good men and workmen who are
Chartists. Note. Not Physical force.

It won't be took as boastful in me, if I
make the remark (for I can't put down what
I have got to say, without putting that down
before going any further), that I have always
been of an ingenious turn. I once got twenty
pound by a screw, and it's in use now.
I have been twenty year, off and on,
completing an Invention and perfecting it. I
perfected of it, last Christmas Eve at ten
o'clock at night. Me and my wife stood and
let some tears fall over the Model, when it
was done and I brought her in to take a look
at it.

A friend of mine, by the name of William
Butcher, is a Chartist. Moderate. He is a
good speaker. He is very animated. I have
often heard him deliver that what is, at every
turn, in the way of us working-men, is, that
too many places have been made, in the
course of time, to provide for people that
never ought to have been provided for; and
that we have to obey forms and to pay fees to
support those places when we shouldn't ought.
"True," (delivers William Butcher), "all the
public has to do this, but it falls heaviest on
the working man, because he has least to
spare; and likewise because impediments
shouldn't be put in his way, when he wants
redress of wrong, or furtherance of right."
Note. I have wrote down those words from
William Butcher's own mouth. W. B.
delivering them fresh for the aforesaid purpose.

Now, to my Model again. There it was,
perfected of, on Christmas Eve, gone nigh a
year, at ten o'clock at night. All the money I
could spare I had laid out upon the Model;
and when times was bad, or my daughter
Charlotte's children sickly, or both, it had stood
still, months at a spell. I had pulled it to
pieces, and made it over again with
improvements, I don't know how often. There
it stood, at last, a perfected Model as aforesaid.

William Butcher and me had a long talk,
Christmas Day, respecting of the Model.
William is very sensible. But sometimes