American Story Tellers and Their Yarns - Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla, famous for his original and daring electrical researches, said the other day of perpetual motion: —

"It will come. That is to say, something equal or superior to it will come. There is the Wright machine, for instance; doesn't that solve the impossible problem of a man's lifting himself up by his own boot straps?"

"Ambition," said Mr. Tesla, "accomplishes dally miracles. Remember the ambitious hen.

"This faithful creature always laid an egg of the same size as the porcelain nest egg used on her as a decoy.

"Perceiving his hen's Intense ambition. the farmer put a porcelain goose egg in her nest. She laid a goose egg.

"Then the farmer, greatly pleased, put In the nest a whitewashed football. The next time he visited the barn he found in the nest an egg as big as a football, but no hen was in sight

 "He took up the egg and saw engraved on it: —

"'I'm no ostrich, but I've done my best.'"