baby was born, Bradley invented a self-rocking cradle
for it. He constructed the motive-power of the machine from some old
clockwork which was operated by a huge steel ribbon spring strong
enough to move a horse-car and long enough to run for a week without
rewinding. When the cradle was completed, he put the baby in it upon
a pillow and started the machinery. It worked beautifully, and after
watching it for a while Bradley went to bed in a peaceful and happy
frame of mind. Toward midnight he heard something go r-r-r-rip!
Buzz-z-z-z! Crash! Bang! Then a pin or something of the kind in the
clockwork gave way, and before Bradley could get out of bed the cradle
containing the baby was making ninety revolutions a minute, and
hopping around the room and slamming up against the furniture in a
manner that was simply awful to look at.

[Illustration: BRADLEY'S CRADLE]

How to get the child out was now the only consideration which
presented itself to the mind of the inventor. A happy thought struck
him. He took a slat out of the bedstead and held it under the cradle.
On the next down-stroke it stopped with a jerk, and the baby was
thrown, like a stone out of a catapult, against the washstand,
fortunately with the pillow to break its fall. But the machine kept
whizzing round and round the room as soon as the slat was withdrawn,
and Bradley, in an ecstasy of rage, flung it out the back window into
the yard. It continued to make such a clatter there that he had to go
down and pile up barrels and slop-buckets and bricks and clothes-props
and part of the grape-arbor on it, so that all it could do was to lie
there all night buzzing with a kind of smothered hum and keeping the
next-door neighbors awake, so that they pelted it with bootjacks,
under the impression that it was cats.

Mrs. Bradley expressed such decided views respecting cradles of that
pattern that Mr. Bradley turned his attention to other matters
than those of a domestic character. He resolved to revolutionize
navigation. It occurred to him that some kind of an apparatus might be
devised by which a man could walk upon the surface of the water, and
he went to work at it. The result was that in a few weeks he produced
and patented Bradley's Water Perambulator. It consisted of a couple of
shallow scows, each about four feet long. These were to be fastened to
the feet; and Bradley informed his friends that with a little practice
a man could glide over the bosom of a river