to the planters boundless resources of
wealth, and rendered the occupations of the slaves less unhealthy and
laborious than they had been before.

Mrs. Greene, therefore, invited to her house gentlemen from different
parts of the State, and on the first day after they had assembled she
conducted them to a temporary building, which had been erected for the
machine, and they saw with astonishment and delight that more cotton
could be separated from the seed in one day, by the labor of a single
hand, than could be done in the usual manner in the space of many
months.

Mr. Whitney might now have indulged in bright reveries of fortune and of
fame; but we shall have various opportunities of seeing that he tempered
his inventive genius with an unusual share of the calm, considerate
qualities of the financier. Although urged by his friends to secure a
patent and devote himself to the manufacture and introduction of his
machines, he coolly replied that on account of the great expense and
trouble which always attend the introduction of a new invention, and the
difficulty of enforcing a law in favor of patentees, in opposition to
the individual interests of so large a number of persons as would be
concerned in the culture of this article, it was with great reluctance
that he should consent to relinquish the hopes of a lucrative
profession, for which he had been destined, with an expectation of
indemnity either from the justice or the gratitude of his countrymen,
even should the invention answer the most sanguine anticipations of his
friends.

The individual who contributed most to incite him to persevere in the
undertaking was Phineas Miller, Esq. Mr. Miller was a native of
Connecticut and graduate of Yale College. Like Mr. Whitney, soon after
he had completed his education at college, he came to Georgia as a
private teacher in the family of General Greene, and after the decease
of the general he became the husband of Mrs. Greene. He had qualified
himself for the profession of law, and was a gentleman of cultivated
mind and superior talents; but he was of an ardent temperament, and
therefore well fitted to enter with zeal into the views which the genius
of his friend had laid open to him. He had also considerable funds at
command, and proposed to Mr. Whitney to become his joint adventurer, and
to be at the whole expense of maturing the invention until it should be
patented. If the machine should succeed in its intended operatio