Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures

Edgar Franklin was the working name used for his publications by US writer Edgar Franklin Stearns (1879-1958), son of Frank Albert Stearns, who wrote as Fred Thorpe; his Mr Hawkins\' Humorous Adventures (coll of linked stories 1904), all reprinted from The Argosy, features the eponymous inventor/Scientist comically failing to make a series of devices, such as the pumpless pump, work properly – a tall-tale comic convention found very frequently in late nineteenth-century American magazine fiction; the series continued to 1915 in various of the Frank A Munsey magazines. "The Burden of the Billions" (August-December 1907 All-Story), a novel-length sci-fi tale, deals with mind control.