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Summer trips will be more easy to arrange and pack for, if we have such
space-saving inventions as the travelling or military hair-brush, as the
inventor calls it. It is a handleless brush, the back forming a box deep
enough to contain a comb, and provided with a sliding lid which pushes in
or out like the lid of a child's pencil-box.
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This invention comes from the ever-inventive West, and consists of a
penholder formed of tightly rolled paper which in some ingenious manner
holds the pen permanently in place.
At last we seem to have a mucilage brush that is going to answer every
requirement.
We have had them in plenty with the handles so arranged that the mucilage
would not get on one's fingers, and so that the neck of the bottle would
not get clogged. But so far every invention has fallen short in one very
important particular. The brush has always been left in the mucilage,
where it got hard and stiff and unusable for a time, or had to be lifted
out and put in a fresh compartment, where it again dries and hardens.
The new brush is so arranged that it does not touch the mucilage, but is
held above it by a spring in the handle. When the gum is to be used, the
top of the handle is pressed, and the brush is forced down into the bottle
until it meets the liquid.
The moment the finger is taken off the handle, the brush springs back into
place; and when taken out of the bottle it is found to be furnished with a
metal rim which prevents any of the liquid from touching the fingers.
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We have chronometers which can register time, and odometers which can
register distance, but there has been the double weight to carry of the
two instruments; and, while every effort is being made to reduce the
weight of the bicycle as much as possible, every ounce or fraction of an
ounce tells. Consequently all cyclists are indebted to the man whose happy
thought it was to combine the two, and who had the skill to do it. An
instrument can now be had which will at one and the same time register
time and distance.
[Illustration]
Something new which will surely find favor with bicycle riders is a
simple coupling apparatus by means of which any two safety bicycles may be
converted into a tandem. We see so many bicycle tandems in the parks and
bicycle paths that riders will surely be glad to know that any two people
can have a tandem at a moment's notice, and at the same time, if one
person only wishes to ride, the machines can with equal speed be restored
to their original condition.