Show I t fIII J MANY YEARS OF LABOR LOST Odd Experience of a Man Who Once Wrote a Book I have been told said a man ol experiences that It Ls not unusual for men to spend much thought and toll over Inventions of one sort and another only to nnd when they took these things to Washington to be pat anted that the same Ideas had long before been worked out by somebody I else and that patents had already been Issued on them I had that ox perlence once with a hook I spent fourteen years once writ Ing a book and I had It nil but completed com-pleted And then one day stopping I at a secondhand book stall I picked up from among a lot of books offered at five cents each one that bore a title In the very words that I had decided upon for the title of my hook and the opening sentence In this book was almost al-most Identical with that In my own Somebody else had had tho same Idea that I had worked over so long antI had written nnd published a book about It fifty years before |