all that was to be done.
After our first child was born I used to come into the house and find
my wife rocking the cradle, and I relieved her from that while I was
there. After doing that for a few days I thought to myself that I
could make that thing go of itself. So I went into my shop, and made a
pendulous cradle that would rock the child. Then I attached a musical
instrument which would sing for it, and at the same time the machine
would keep the flies off. The latter was very simple; by hanging
something to the cross bar, as the cradle swung under it, backward and
forward, it would create wind enough to drive away the flies. The
machine was wound up by a weight, and would run for nearly half an
hour without stopping. I took out a patent for it, and one day a
peddler came along with a horse and wagon, as they do in the country,
and saw the cradle. He struck a bargain with me and bought the patent
right for the State of Connecticut, giving for it his horse and wagon
and all the goods he had with him. They afterward made some there, but
nothing like as good as mine. It was a beautiful piece of furniture,"
said Mr. Cooper regretfully, as he thought of it as a thing of the
past. "They afterward substituted springs for the weight movement, but
that kind was not so good."

About this time the war with England ended and the market was spoiled
for the shearing machines. Then, we believe, Mr. Cooper tried his hand
at cabinetmaking, but that failed, and he set up a grocery store where
the Bible House now stands. While selling groceries Mr. Cooper made an
invention which ought to have made his fortune, but it did not. The
story is best told in Mr. Cooper's own words:

"It was just before the Erie Canal was completed, and I conceived a
plan by which to tow boats by the use of all the elevated waters on
the line of the canal. To demonstrate that that was practicable I made
with my own hands a chain two miles long, and placed posts 200 feet
apart in the East River from Bellevue dock down town about a mile.
These posts supported grooved wheels to lay the chain in, forming an
endless chain. The whole was moved by an overshot waterwheel placed at
the Bellevue dock. A reservoir twelve feet square and three deep held
the water to turn the wheel."

At the suggestion of Governor Clinton Mr. Cooper tightened his chain
and pulled up the end post just before the grand trial of his device
was to come off. He succeeded in getting stone en