It was a ghastly idea, and I squelched it with a promptness that was almost rude.

Then he invented a wood-sawing machine and patched it together himself, and he really sawed wood with it.

It was ingenious; it was capable; and it would have made a comfortable little fortune for him; but just at the wrong time Providence interfered again.

Orion applied for a patent and found that the same machine had already been patented and had gone into business and was thriving.
Presently the State of New York offered a fifty-thousand-dollar prize for a practical method of navigating the Erie Canal with steam canal-boats.

Orion worked at that thing for two or three years, invented and completed a method, and was once more ready to reach out and seize upon imminent wealth when somebody pointed out a defect: his steam canal-boat could not be used in the winter-time; and in the summer-time the commotion its wheels would make in the water would wash away the State of New York on both sides.
Innumerable were Orion's projects for acquiring the means to pay off the debt to me.