Keely, of motor fame, looms up again in the letter of a correspondent of the New York World, describing a visit to the remarkable "man and the appearance of his workshop. It was strewn with broken models and pieces of machinery twisted as though a Titan had played with them. Being asked what force curled up iron in this way, Keely recited the familiar phrases, “latent power and water,” “multiplication of force,” “generation of vapor” — leaving the questioner exactly as wise as he started. The chiefly interesting part of the letter is a passage containing some bits of description not previously made public. Keely is 45 years old. From boyhood he had an affinity for mechanics. At 12 he made a steam engine; at 14 he made another; then became a clerk in a drug store, then a locomotive engineer, and then a gymnast. He has been blown into the water from a steamboat, has made two balloon ascensions, lived out west in Minnesota, been a rover, a troubadour, a restless seeker after something new and strange. With his friends he displays his spirits like a fawn. He will toss a cigar to the ceiling and catch the right end in his teeth, fling across the yard a weight that would brake the backs of three ordinary men, vault a fence, creates a devil in his workshop, and toys with him while confusing and amazing with an iron logic the opinions of a grey headed engineer who has dropped in to make fun of the motor. He is, in fact, a queer fellow. He may be the greatest discoverer or the greatest crackbrain of the time.
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