The character of Robert Ford¹ may be divined without much difficulty from the glimpses which have already been given. He was an amiable² man, but strikingly deficient³ in those practical traits which usually mark our countrymen and command success even under the most unpromising circumstances. He was not a man to succeed in business, nor suited for the rough jostling with the world which business men must expect. He ought rather to have been a quiet scholar, and dreamed away long days in his library,—“the world forgetting, by the world forgot.” Such would have been his choice if his circumstances had been easy. Under the pressure of necessity he had turned aside from the ordinary paths of money-making to devote himself to a chimerical⁴ plan by which he hoped to attain⁵ wealth and distinction.

 

No man of a well balanced mind would have labored⁷ with such sanguine⁸ expectations of success on a project so uncertain as the invention of a flying machine. But Mr. Ford had not a well balanced mind. He was much given to theorizing, and, like many amiable but obstinate⁹ persons, it was as difficult to dislodge from his mind a purpose which had once gained entrance there as to convert him by some miraculous¹⁰ transformation¹¹ into a sharp man of the world. Had he lived in the middle ages it is very probable that his tastes and the habits of his mind would have led him to devote himself to alchemy, or some other recondite

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