FORTUNE-MAKING IDEAS.

Evening Star, Issue 12973, 9 June 1908, Page 5

FORTUNE-MAKING IDEAS.

Chance brought me the acquaintance the other day of a typical American whose inventions enjoy a houseuo.d fame spread world-wide. One would hardly suspect that the dingy, dusty little office, hidden away in a corner of what was once the substantial home of a prosperous New York merchant, but is now a newspaper office in the downtown business quarter of i,'-e city, is the cradlo and mint of puzzles ai* conundrums that crazed the brains of so many millions. But Mr Sam Loyd, new close upon his seventieth year, maker of several fortunes from ingenious ideas, finds the seclusion advantageous. His brain, with it 3 curious mathematical bent, is as fertile as ever. If the fancy takes him to construct a chess (problem or trace some peculiar property of figuri.B, framo a puzzle, or set a poser for the "fascination of young and oid folks alike, there are some days in which he can with equal facility turn out any or all of these. More than fifty years ago he was playing chess with Morphy. Only recently, in an international tourney, his problem was adjudged the best. As a boy he went to the schcol kept by Dr Houghton, the founder of "The Little Church Round the Corner," a New York institution. The master offered a prize for the best piece of inventive work. The design sent in by Loyd, which won, threw into the shade the work of the Vanderbilis of the elder generation, and of James Gordon Bennett, who were among his schoolfellows. Lately Mr Loyd had the curiosity to reconstruct that puzzle of his boyhood. He told me it took him a week Z?fore he hit upon tho original device. Before he was twenty, one of his puzzles had netted him a sousiderafcle sum of mency with which to begin life. The idea of the " Donkey Puzzle," in its first conception a disiointed "pony, suggested itself after a visit to England and a vivid impression of the White Horse which marks King Alfred's victory over the Dane 3 in Wessex. The "Piss in Clover" puzz'.e the "Chinamen Getting oft the Earth," "How Old is Ann?" and a hundred ot.'.er puzzlemysteries of less fame were to follow in due course, supplemented by many mechanical engineering inventions. Mr Loyd does not attribute this power of puzz!e-making to any abnormal faculty. Any chi.d's mind, ho believes, can be trained by the mental gymnastics of puzzlen to g asp a knowledge of mathematical principles from which the "average boy often turns in disgust, when presented in lifeless school rules. He has little patience with the ordinary method of teaching arithmetic, and thinks that tho younger generation, if they become cspert in solving problems and answering questions, as they promise to do with wits sharpened by recreative puzzles, will be better able than their fathers to keep abreast with the rapid advance of science and the development of stupendous industries.

Seven of the newest and best theatres ia New York were built by a speculator who jumped into a fortune by a piece of shrewd political forecasting. Mr David Beiasco's Stuyvesant Theatre, opened last autumn, in comfort, convenience, stage equipment, and decoration, comes near perfection according to the most modern ideas of theatrical building construction, and the Ajstor is another pretty little house of agreeaßle seat-holding capacity. The builder of the theatres w.13 not a professional theatrical architect, but in his later years displayed a positive genius for practical execution of theatre deiigns. His. reputation, however, and the popular nickname he bore. " Bim, the Button Man," were gained in a totally different sphere. Meyer Bimberg, as a young man. dubblcd in politics in the east aide district of New York, where he was bom. He was sent as: a delegate to the St. Louis National Republican Convention, which nominated M'Kinley for President and Hobart for Vice-President. ' He had gofc. a "tip" that they would bo chosen, and in anticipation, he had 10C.0G0 burtons made bearing their photographs. Everyone at the Convention fastened one in his buttonhole, and the campaign photo-button became an institution. Bimbcrg managed to keep his monopoly in the idea, increasing the fortune jt created for him by picturing oa a. button

Mr Roosevelt in Rough Eider uniform, when, as lieutenant-colonel, be brought back bis regiment from the war in Cuba, and was about to become a candidate for the Governorship of New York State. After that ; " Bim's" buttons were a feature of every ) national and State election of importance, and he seldom failed to pick the winner. He was just as successful in meeting the public demand for more theatres in the theatrical district proper of New York as well as in the suburbs.—New York correspondent of the ' Evening Standard.'