THE BUREAU OF PATENTS—CRAZY INVENTORS AND WONDERFUL INVENTIONS
Patent-Rights in Steamboats—The Corps of Examiners—Twenty
Thousand Applications _per annum_—Fourteen Thousand Patents
Granted in One Year—Wonderful Expansion of Inventive
Genius—“The Universal Yankee”—Second-hand Inventions—Where the
Inventions Come From—Taking Out a Patent for the Lord’s
Prayer—A Patent for a Cow’s Tail—A Lady’s Patent—Hesitating to
Accept a Million Dollars—How Patentees are Protected—The
American System—Exploits of General Leggett—His Efficiency in
Office—The Inventor Always a Dreamer—Perpetual Motion—The
Invention of a D. D.—Silencing the Doctor—A New Process of
Embalming—A Dead Body Sent to the Office—Utilizing Niagara—An
Englishman’s Invention—Inventors in Paris—How to Kill Lions and
Tigers in the United States with Catmint—A Fearful Bomb
Shell—Eccentric Letters—Amusing Specimens of Correspondence, 446