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Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous

by Sarah Knowles Bolton · English · Gutenberg #35950 · 523,529 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous

Author: Sarah Knowles Bolton


        
Release date: April 24, 2011 [eBook #35950]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS ***




Produced by Darleen Dove, Sharon Verougstraete and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









  LIVES
  OF
  POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS.

  BY
  SARAH K. BOLTON.


  "_There is properly no History, only Biography._"
                                                  --EMERSON.

  _Human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures the
    welcomest on human walls._
                                                  --CARLYLE.


  _FORTY-FIRST THOUSAND._

  NEW YORK
  THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
  PUBLISHERS




  _Copyright,_
  BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
  1885.


  Norwood Press:
  J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith.
  Boston, Mass., U.S.A.




  TO
  MY ONLY SISTER,

  Mrs. Halsey D. Miller,

  IN REMEMBRANCE OF
  MANY HAPPY HOURS.




PREFACE.


These characters have been chosen from various countries and from varied
professions, that the youth who read this book may see that poverty is
no barrier to success. It usually develops ambition, and nerves people
to action. Life at best has much of struggle, and we need to be cheered
and stimulated by the careers of those who have overcome obstacles.

If Lincoln and Garfield, both farmer-boys, could come to the Presidency,
then there is a chance for other farmer-boys. If Ezra Cornell, a
mechanic, could become the president of great telegraph companies, and
leave millions to a university, then other mechanics can come to fame.
If Sir Titus Salt, working and sorting wool in a factory at nineteen,
could build one of the model towns of the world for his thousands of
workingmen, then there is encouragement and inspiration for other
toilers in factories. These lives show that without WORK and WILL no
great things are achieved.

I have selected several characters because they were the centres of
important historical epochs. With Garibaldi is necessarily told the
story of Italian unity; with Garrison and Greeley, the fall of slavery;
and with Lincoln and Sheridan, the battles of our Civil War.

                                                    S. K. B.




CONTENTS.


                                                 PAGE

  GEORGE PEABODY              Merchant              1

  BAYARD TAYLOR               Traveller            13

  Captain JAMES B. EADS       Civil Engineer       26

  JAMES WATT                  Inventor             33

  Sir JOSIAH MASON            Manufacturer         46

  BERNARD PALISSY             Potter               54

  BERTEL THORWALDSEN          Sculptor             65

  WOLFGANG MOZART             Composer             72

  SAMUEL JOHNSON              Author               83

  OLIVER GOLDSMITH            Poet and Writer      90

  MICHAEL FARADAY             Scientist            96

  Sir HENRY BESSEMER          Maker of Steel      112

  Sir TITUS SALT              Philanthropist      124

  JOSEPH MARIE JACQUARD       Silk Weaver         130

  HORACE GREELEY              Editor              138

  WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON      Reformer            156

  GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI          Patriot             172

  JEAN PAUL RICHTER           Novelist            187

  LEON GAMBETTA               Statesman           204

  DAVID G. FARRAGUT           Sailor              219

  EZRA CORNELL                Mechanic            238

  Lieut.-General SHERIDAN     Soldier             251

  THOMAS COLE                 Painter             270

  OLE BULL                    Violinist           284

  MEISSONIER                  Artist              303

  GEO. W. CHILDS              Journalist          313

  DWIGHT L. MOODY             Evangelist          323

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN             President           342




[Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY.]

GEORGE PEABODY.


If America had been asked who were to be her most munificent givers in
the nineteenth century, she would scarcely have pointed to two grocer's
boys, one in a little country store at Danvers, Mass., the other in
Baltimore; both poor, both uneducated; the one leaving seven millions to
Johns Hopkins University and Hospital, the other nearly nine millions to
elevate humanity. George Peabody was born in Danvers, Feb. 18, 1795. His
parents were respectable, hard-working people, whose scanty income
afforded little education for their children. George grew up an
obedient, faithful son, called a "mother-boy" by his companions, from
his devotion to her,--a title of which any boy may well be proud.

At eleven years of age he must go out into the world to earn his living.
Doubtless his mother wished to keep her child in school; but there was
no money. A place was found with a Mr. Proctor in a grocery-store, and
here, for four years, he worked day by day, giving his earnings to his
mother, and winning esteem for his promptness and honesty. But the boy
at fifteen began to grow ambitious. He longed for a larger store and a
broader field. Going with his maternal grandfather to Thetford, Vt., he
remained a year, when he came back to work for his brother in a
dry-goods store in Newburyport. Perhaps now in this larger town his
ambition would be satisfied, when, lo! the store burned, and George was
thrown out of employment.

His father had died, and he was without a dollar in the world. Ambition
seemed of little use now. However, an uncle in Georgetown, D.C., hearing
that the boy needed work, sent for him, and thither he went for two
years. Here he made many friends, and won trade, by his genial manner
and respectful bearing. His tact was unusual. He never wounded the
feelings of a buyer of goods, never tried him with unnecessary talk,
never seemed impatient, and was punctual to the minute. Perhaps no one
trait is more desirable than the latter. A person who breaks his
appointments, or keeps others waiting for him, loses friends, and
business success as well.

A young man's habits are always observed. If he is worthy, and has
energy, the world has a place for him, and sooner or later he will find
it. A wholesale dry-goods dealer, Mr. Riggs, had been watching young
Peabody. He desired a partner of energy, perseverance, and honesty.
Calling on the young clerk, he asked him to put his labor against his,
Mr. Riggs's, capital. "But I am only nineteen years of age," was the
reply.

This was considered no objection, and the partnership was formed. A year
later, the business was moved to Baltimore. The boyish partner travelled
on horseback through the western wilds of New York, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia, selling goods, and lodging over night with
farmers or planters. In seven years the business had so increased, that
branch houses were established in Philadelphia and New York. Finally Mr.
Riggs retired from the firm; and George Peabody found himself, at the
age of thirty-five, at the head of a large and wealthy establishment,
which his own energy, industry, and honesty had helped largely to build.
He had bent his life to one purpose, that of making his business a
success. No one person can do many things well.

Having visited London several times in matters of trade, he determined
to make that great city his place of residence. He had studied finance
by experience as well as close observation, and believed that he could
make money in the great metropolis. Having established himself as a
banker at Wanford Court, he took simple lodgings, and lived without
display. When Americans visited London, they called upon the genial,
true-hearted banker, whose integrity they could always depend upon, and
transacted their business with him.

In 1851, the World's Fair was opened at the Crystal Palace, London,
Prince Albert having worked earnestly to make it a great success.
Congress neglected to make the needed appropriations for America; and
her people did not care, apparently, whether Powers' Greek Slave, Hoe's
wonderful printing-press, or the McCormick Reaper were seen or not. But
George Peabody cared for the honor of his nation, and gave fifteen
thousand dollars to the American exhibitors, that they might make their
display worthy of the great country which they were to represent. The
same year, he gave his first Fourth of July dinner to leading Americans
and Englishmen, headed by the Duke of Wellington. While he remembered
and honored the day which freed us from England, no one did more than he
to bind the two nations together by the great kindness of a great heart.

Mr. Peabody was no longer the poor grocery boy, or the dry-goods clerk.
He was fine looking, most intelligent from his wide reading, a total
abstainer from liquors and tobacco, honored at home and abroad, and very
rich. Should he buy an immense estate, and live like a prince? Should he
give parties and grand dinners, and have servants in livery? Oh, no! Mr.
Peabody had acquired his wealth for a different purpose. He loved
humanity. "How could he elevate the people?" was the one question of his
life. He would not wait till his death, and let others spend his money;
he would have the satisfaction of spending it himself.

And now began a life of benevolence which is one of the brightest in our
history. Unmarried and childless, he made other wives and children happy
by his boundless generosity. If the story be true, that he was once
engaged to a beautiful American girl, who gave him up for a former poor
lover, the world has been the gainer by her choice.

In 1852, Mr. Peabody gave ten thousand dollars to help fit out the
second expedition under Dr. Kane, in his search for Sir John Franklin;
and for this gift a portion of the newly-discovered country was justly
called Peabody Land. This same year, the town of Danvers, his
birthplace, decided to celebrate its centennial. Of course the rich
London banker was invited as one of the guests. He was too busy to be
present, but sent a letter, to be opened on the day of the celebration.
The seal was broken at dinner, and this was the toast, or sentiment, it
contained: "EDUCATION--_a debt due from present to future generations._"
A check was enclosed for twenty thousand dollars for the purpose of
building an Institute, with a free library and free course of lectures.
Afterward this gift was increased to two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. The poor boy had not forgotten the home of his childhood.

Four years later, when Peabody Institute was dedicated, the giver, who
had been absent from America twenty years, was present. New York and
other cities offered public receptions; but he declined all save
Danvers. A great procession was formed, the houses along the streets
being decorated, all eager to do honor to their noble townsman. The
Governor of Massachusetts, Edward Everett, and others made eloquent
addresses, and then the kind-faced, great-hearted man responded:--

"Though Providence has granted me an unvaried and unusual success in the
pursuit of fortune in other lands, I am still in heart the humble boy
who left yonder unpretending dwelling many, _very_ many years ago....
There is not a youth within the sound of my voice whose early
opportunities and advantages are not very much greater than were my own;
and I have since achieved nothing that is impossible to the most humble
boy among you. Bear in mind, that, to be truly great, it is not
necessary that you should gain wealth and importance. Steadfast and
undeviating _truth_, fearless and straightforward _integrity_, and an
_honor_ ever unsullied by an unworthy word or action, make their
possessor greater than worldly success or prosperity. These qualities
constitute greatness."

Soon after this, Mr. Peabody determined to build an Institute, combining
a free library and lectures with an Academy of Music and an Art Gallery,
in the city of Baltimore. For this purpose he gave over one million
dollars--a princely gift indeed! Well might Baltimore be proud of the
day when he sought a home in her midst.

But the merchant-prince had not finished his giving. He saw the poor of
the great city of London, living in wretched, desolate homes. Vice and
poverty were joining hands. He, too, had been poor. He could sympathize
with those who knew not how to make ends meet. What would so stimulate
these people to good citizenship as comfortable and cheerful
abiding-places? March 12, 1862, he called together a few of his trusted
friends in London, and placed in their hands, for the erection of neat,
tasteful dwellings for the poor, the sum of seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Ah, what a friend the poor had found! not the gift of
a few dollars, which would soon be absorbed in rent, but homes which for
a small amount might be enjoyed as long as they lived.

At once some of the worst portions of London were purchased; tumble-down
structures were removed; and plain, high brick blocks erected, around
open squares, where the children could find a playground. Gas and water
were supplied, bathing and laundry rooms furnished. Then the poor came
eagerly, with their scanty furniture, and hired one or two rooms for
twenty-five or fifty cents a week,--cab-men, shoemakers, tailors, and
needle-women. Tenants were required to be temperate and of good moral
character. Soon tiny pots of flowers were seen in the windows, and a
happier look stole into the faces of hard-working fathers and mothers.

Mr. Peabody soon increased his gift to the London poor to three million
dollars, saying, "If judiciously managed for two hundred years, its
accumulation will amount to a sum sufficient to buy the city of London."

No wonder that these gifts of millions began to astonish the world.
London gave him the freedom of the city in a gold box,--an honor rarely
bestowed,--and erected his bronze statue near the Royal Exchange. Queen
Victoria wished to make him a baron; but he declined all titles. What
gift, then, would he accept, was eagerly asked. "A letter from the Queen
of England, which I may carry across the Atlantic, and deposit as a
memorial of one of her most faithful sons," was the response. It is not
strange that so pure and noble a man as George Peabody admired the
purity and nobility of character of her who governs England so wisely.

A beautiful letter was returned by the Queen, assuring him how deeply
she appreciated his noble act of more than princely munificence,--an
act, as the Queen believes, "wholly without parallel," and asking him to
accept a miniature portrait of herself. The portrait, in a massive gold
frame, is fourteen inches long and ten inches wide, representing the
Queen in robes of state,--the largest miniature ever attempted in
England, and for the making of which a furnace was especially built. The
cost is believed to have been over fifty thousand dollars in gold. It is
now preserved, with her letter, in the Peabody Institute near Danvers.

Oct. 25, 1866, the beautiful white marble Institute in Baltimore was to
be dedicated. Mr. Peabody had crossed the ocean to be present. Besides
the famous and the learned, twenty thousand children with Peabody badges
were gathered to meet him. The great man's heart was touched as he said,
"Never have I seen a more beautiful sight than this vast collection of
interesting children. The review of the finest army, attended by the
most delightful strains of martial music, could never give me half the
pleasure." He was now seventy-one years old. He had given nearly five
millions; could the world expect any more? He realized that the freed
slaves at the South needed an education. They were poor, and so were a
large portion of the white race. He would give for their education three
million dollars, the same amount he had bestowed upon the poor of
London. To the trustees having this gift in charge he said, "With my
advancing years, my attachment to my native land has but become more
devoted. My hope and faith in its successful and glorious future have
grown brighter and stronger. But, to make her prosperity more than
superficial, her moral and intellectual development should keep pace
with her material growth. I feel most deeply, therefore, that it is the
duty and privilege of the more favored and wealthy portions of our
nation to assist those who are less fortunate." Noble words! Mr.
Peabody's health was beginning to fail. What he did must now be done
quickly. Yale College received a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
a Museum of Natural History; Harvard the same, for a Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology; to found the Peabody Academy of Science at
Salem a hundred and forty thousand dollars; to Newburyport Library,
where the fire threw him out of employment, and thus probably broadened
his path in life, fifteen thousand dollars; twenty-five thousand dollars
each to various institutions of learning throughout the country; ten
thousand dollars to the Sanitary Commission during the war, besides four
million dollars to his relatives; making in all thirteen million
dollars. Just before his return to England, he made one of the most
tender gifts of his life. The dear mother whom he idolized was dead, but
he would build her a fitting monument; not a granite shaft, but a
beautiful Memorial Church at Georgetown, Mass., where for centuries,
perhaps, others will worship the God she worshipped. On a marble tablet
are the words, "Affectionately consecrated by her children, George and
Judith, to the memory of Mrs. Judith Peabody." Whittier wrote the hymn
for its dedication:--

    "The heart, and not the hand, has wrought,
      From sunken base to tower above,
    The image of a tender thought,
      The memory of a deathless love."

Nov. 4, 1869, Mr. Peabody lay dying at the house of a friend in London.
The Queen sent a special telegram of inquiry and sympathy, and desired
to call upon him in person; but it was too late. "It is a great
mystery," said the dying man feebly; "but I shall know all soon." At
midnight he passed to his reward.

Westminster Abbey opened her doors for a great funeral, where statesmen
and earls bowed their heads in honor of the departed. Then the Queen
sent her noblest man-of-war, "Monarch," to bear in state, across the
Atlantic, "her friend," the once poor boy of Danvers. Around the coffin,
in a room draped in black, stood immense wax candles, lighted. When the
great ship reached America, Legislatures adjourned, and went with
Governors and famous men to receive the precious freight. The body was
taken by train to Peabody, and then placed on a funeral car, eleven feet
long and ten feet high, covered with black velvet, trimmed with silver
lace and stars. Under the casket were winged cherubs in silver. The car
was drawn by six horses covered with black and silver, while corps of
artillery preceded the long procession. At sunset the Institute was
reached, and there, surrounded by the English and American flags draped
with crape, the guard kept silent watch about the dead. At the funeral,
at the church, Hon. Robert C. Winthrop pronounced the eloquent eulogy,
of the "brave, honest, noble-hearted friend of mankind," and then, amid
a great concourse of people, George Peabody was buried at Harmony Grove,
by the side of the mother whom he so tenderly loved. Doubtless he looked
out upon this greensward from his attic window when a child or when he
labored in the village store. Well might two nations unite in doing
honor to this man, both good and great, who gave nine million dollars to
bless humanity.

[The building fund of L500,000 left by Mr. Peabody for the benefit of
the poor of London has now been increased by rents and interest to
L857,320. The whole of this great sum of money is in active employment,
together with L340,000 which the trustees have borrowed. A total of
L1,170,787 has been expended during the time the fund has been in
existence, of which L80,903 was laid out during 1884. The results of
these operations are seen in blocks of artisans' dwellings built on land
purchased by the trustees and let to working men at rents within their
means, containing conveniences and comforts not ordinarily attainable by
them, thus fulfilling the benevolent intentions of Mr. Peabody. At the
present time 4551 separate dwellings have been erected, containing
10,144 rooms, inhabited by 18,453 persons. Thirteen new blocks of
buildings are now in course of erection and near completion. Indeed,
there is no cessation in the work of fulfilling the intentions of the
noble bequest.--_Boston Journal_, Mar. 7, 1885.]




[Illustration: BAYARD TAYLOR.]

BAYARD TAYLOR.


Since Samuel Johnson toiled in Grub Street, London, literature has
scarcely furnished a more pathetic or inspiring illustration of struggle
to success than that of Bayard Taylor. Born of Quaker parentage in the
little town of Kennett Square, near Philadelphia, Jan. 11, 1825, he grew
to boyhood in the midst of fresh air and the hard work of farm-life. His
mother, a refined and intelligent woman, who taught him to read at four,
and who early discovered her child's love for books, shielded him as far
as possible from picking up stones and weeding corn, and set him to
rocking the baby to sleep. What was her amazement one day, on hearing
loud cries from the infant, to find Bayard absorbed in reading, and
rocking his own chair furiously, supposing it to be the cradle! It was
evident, that, though such a boy might become a fine literary man, he
could not be a successful baby-tender.

He was especially eager to read poetry and travels, and, before he was
twelve years old, had devoured the contents of their small circulating
library, as well as Cooper's novels, and the histories of Gibbon,
Robertson, and Hume. The few books which he owned were bought with money
earned by selling nuts which he had gathered. He read Milton, Scott,
Byron, and Wordsworth; and his mother would often hear him repeating
poetry to his brother after they had gone to bed. He was always planning
journeys in Europe, which seemed very far from being realized. At
fourteen he began to study Latin and French, and at fifteen, Spanish;
and a year later he assisted in teaching at the academy where he was
attending school.

He was ambitious; but there seemed no open door. There is never an open
door to fame or prosperity, except we open it for ourselves. The world
is too busy to help others; and assistance usually weakens rather than
strengthens us. About this time he received, through request, an
autograph from Charles Dickens, then lecturing in this country. The boy
of sixteen wrote in his journal: "It was not without a feeling of
ambition that I looked upon it; that as he, a humble clerk, had risen to
be the guest of a mighty nation, so I, a humble pedagogue, might, by
unremitted and arduous intellectual and moral exertion, become a light,
a star, among the names of my country. May it be!... I believe all poets
are possessed in a greater or less degree of ambition. I think this is
never given without a mind of sufficient power to sustain it, and to
achieve its lofty object."

At seventeen, Bayard's schooling was over. He sketched well, and would
gladly have gone to Philadelphia to study engraving; but he had no
money. One poem had been published in the "Saturday Evening Post." Those
only who have seen their first poem in print can experience his joy. But
writing poetry would not earn him a living. He had no liking for
teaching, but, as that seemed the only thing at hand, he would try to
obtain a school. He did not succeed, however, and apprenticed himself
for four years to a printer. He worked faithfully, using all his spare
hours in reading and writing poetry.

Two years later, he walked to Philadelphia and back--thirty miles each
way--to see if fifteen of his poems could not be printed in a book! His
ambition evidently had not abated. Of course no publisher would take the
book at his own risk. There was no way of securing its publication,
therefore, but to visit his friends, and solicit them to buy copies in
advance. This was a trying matter for a refined nature; but it was a
necessity. He hoped thus to earn a little money for travel, and "to win
a name that the person who shall be chosen to share with me the toils of
life will not be ashamed to own." This "person" was Mary Agnew, whose
love and that of Bayard Taylor form one of the saddest and tenderest
pictures in our literature.

At last the penniless printer boy had determined to see Europe. For two
years he had read every thing he could find upon travels abroad. His
good mother mourned over the matter, and his acquaintances prophesied
dire results from such a roving disposition. He would go again to
Philadelphia, and see if the newspapers did not wish correspondence from
Europe. All the editors politely declined the ardent boy's proposals.
Probably he did not know that "unknown writers" are not wanted.

About to return home, "not in despair," he afterwards wrote, "but in a
state of wonder as to where my funds would come from, for I felt certain
they would come," the editor of the "Saturday Evening Post" offered him
four dollars a letter for twelve letters,--fifty dollars,--with the
promise of taking more if they were satisfactory. The "United States
Gazette" made a similar offer, and, after selling a few manuscript poems
which he had with him, he returned home in triumph, with a hundred and
forty dollars in his pocket! "This," he says, "seemed sufficient to
carry me to the end of the world."

Immediately Bayard and his cousin started on foot for Washington, a
hundred miles, to see the member of Congress from their district, and
obtain passports from him. Reaching a little village on their way
thither, they were refused lodgings at the tavern because of the
lateness of the hour,--nine o'clock!--and walked on till near midnight.
Then seeing a house brilliantly lighted, as for a wedding, they
approached, and asked the proprietor whether a tavern were near by. The
man addressed turned fiercely upon the lads, shouting, "Begone! Leave
the place instantly. Do you hear? Off!" The amazed boys hastened away,
and at three o'clock in the morning, footsore and faint, after a walk of
nearly forty miles, slept in a cart standing beside an old farmhouse.

And now at nineteen, he was in New York, ready for Europe. He called
upon the author, N. P. Willis, who had once written a kind note to him;
and this gentleman, with a ready nature in helping others,--alas! not
always found among writers--gave him several letters of introduction to
newspaper men. Mr. Greeley said bluntly when applied to, "I am sick of
descriptive letters, and will have no more of them. But I should like
some sketches of German life and society, after you have been there, and
know something about it. If the letters are good, you shall be paid for
them; but don't write _until you know something_."

July 1, 1844, Bayard and two young friends, after paying ten dollars
each for steerage passage, started out for this eventful voyage. No
wonder that, as land faded from sight, and he thought of gentle Mary
Agnew and his devoted mother, his heart failed him, and he quite broke
down. After twenty-eight days they landed in Liverpool, strangers, poor,
knowing almost nothing of the world, but full of hope and enthusiasm.
They spent three weeks in Scotland and the north of England, and then
travelled through Belgium to Heidelberg. Bayard passed the first winter
in Frankfort, in the plainest quarters, and then, with his knapsack on
his back, visited Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, and Munich. After
this he walked over the Alps, and through Northern Italy, spending four
months in Florence, and then visiting Rome. Often he was so poor that he
lived on twenty cents a day. Sometimes he was without food for nearly
two days, writing his natural and graphic letters when his ragged
clothes were wet through, and his body faint from fasting. But the
manly, enthusiastic youth always made friends by his good cheer and
unselfishness.

At last he was in London, with but thirty cents to buy food and lodging.
But he had a poem of twelve hundred lines in his knapsack, which he
supposed any London publisher would be glad to accept. He offered it;
but it was "declined with thanks." The youth had not learned that Bayard
Taylor unknown, and Bayard Taylor famous in two hemispheres, were two
different names upon the title-page of a book. Publishers cannot usually
afford to do missionary work in their business; they print what will
sell. "Weak from sea-sickness," he says, "hungry, chilled, and without a
single acquaintance in the great city, my situation was about as
hopeless as it is possible to conceive."

Possibly he could obtain work in a printer's shop. This he tried hour
after hour, and failed. Finally he spent his last twopence for bread,
and found a place to sleep in a third-rate chop-house, among sailors,
and actors from the lower theatres. He rose early, so as not to be asked
to pay for his bed, and again sought work. Fortunately he met an
American publisher, who loaned him five dollars, and with a thankful
heart he returned to pay for his lodging. For six weeks he staid in his
humble quarters, wrote letters home to the newspapers, and also sent
various poems to the English journals, which were all returned to him.
For two years he supported himself on two hundred and fifty dollars a
year, earning it all by writing. "I saw," he says, "almost nothing of
intelligent European society; but literature and art were, nevertheless,
open to me, and a new day had dawned in my life."

On his return to America he found that his published letters had been
widely read. He was advised to put them in a book; and "Views Afoot,"
with a preface by N. P. Willis, were soon given to the world. Six
editions were sold the first year; and the boy who had seen Europe in
the midst of so much privation, found himself an author, with the
prospect of fame. Not alone had poverty made these two years hard to
bear. He was allowed to hold no correspondence with Mary Agnew, because
her parents steadily refused to countenance the young lovers. He had
wisely made his mother his confidante, and she had counselled patience
and hope. The rising fame possibly smoothed the course of true love,
for at twenty-one, Bayard became engaged to the idol of his heart. She
was an intelligent and beautiful girl, with dark eyes and soft brown
hair, and to the ardent young traveller seemed more angel than human. He
showed her his every poem, and laid before her every purpose. He wrote
her, "I have often dim, vague forebodings that an eventful destiny is in
store for me"; and then he added in quaint, Quaker dialect, "I have told
thee that existence would not be endurable without thee; I feel further
that thy aid will be necessary to work out the destinies of the
future.... I am really glad that thou art pleased with my poetry. One
word from thee is dearer to me than the cold praise of all the critics
in the land."

For the year following his return home, he edited a country paper, and
thereby became involved in debts which required the labors of the next
three years to cancel. He now decided to go to New York if possible,
where there would naturally be more literary society, and openings for a
writer. He wrote to editors and publishers; but there were no vacancies
to be filled. Finally he was offered enough to pay his board by
translating, and this he gladly accepted. By teaching literature in a
young ladies' school, he increased his income to nine dollars a week.
Not a luxurious amount, surely.

For a year he struggled on, saving every cent possible, and then Mr.
Greeley gave him a place on the "Tribune," at twelve dollars a week. He
worked constantly, often writing poetry at midnight, when his day's
duties were over. He made true friends, such as Stedman and Stoddard,
published a new book of poems; and in the beginning of 1849 life began
to look full of promise. Sent by his paper to write up California, for
six months he lived in the open air, his saddle for his pillow, and on
his return wrote his charming book "El-dorado." He was now twenty-five,
out of debt, and ready to marry Mary Agnew. But a dreadful cloud had
meantime gathered and burst over their heads. The beautiful girl had
been stricken with consumption. The May day bridal had been postponed.
"God help me, if I lose her!" wrote the young author to Mr. Stoddard
from her bedside. Oct. 24 came, and the dying girl was wedded to the man
she loved. Four days later he wrote: "We have had some heart-breaking
hours, talking of what is before us, and are both better and calmer for
it." And, later still: "She is radiantly beautiful; but it is not the
beauty of earth.... We have loved so long, so intimately, and so wholly,
that the footsteps of her life have forever left their traces in mine.
If my name should be remembered among men, hers will not be forgotten."
Dec. 21, 1850, she went beyond; and Bayard Taylor at twenty-six was
alone in the world, benumbed, unfitted for work of any kind. "I am not
my true self more than half the time. I cannot work with any spirit:
another such winter will kill me, I am certain. I shall leave next fall
on a journey somewhere--no matter where," he wrote a friend.

Fortunately he took a trip to the Far East, travelling in Egypt, Asia
Minor, India, and Japan for two years, writing letters which made him
known the country over. On his return, he published three books of
travel, and accepted numerous calls in the lecture-field. His stock in
the "Tribune" had become productive, and he was gaining great success.

His next long journey was to Northern Europe, when he took his brother
and two sisters with him, as he could enjoy nothing selfishly. This time
he saw much of the Brownings and Thackeray, and spent two days as the
guest of Tennyson. He was no longer the penniless youth, vainly looking
for work in London to pay his lodging, but the well-known traveller,
lecturer, and poet. Oct. 27, 1857, seven years after the death of Mary
Agnew, he married the daughter of a distinguished German astronomer,
Marie Hansen, a lady of great culture, whose companionship has ever
proved a blessing.

Tired of travel, Mr. Taylor now longed for a home for his wife and
infant daughter, Lilian. He would erect on the old homestead, where he
played when a boy, such a house as a poet would love to dwell in, and
such as poet friends would delight to visit. So, with minutest care and
thought, "Cedarcroft," a beautiful structure, was built in the midst of
two hundred acres. Every flower, every tree, was planted with as much
love as Scott gave to "Abbotsford." But, when it was completed, the old
story had been told again, of expenses going far beyond expectations,
and, instead of anticipated rest, toil and struggle to pay debts, and
provide for constant outgoes.

But Bayard Taylor was not the man to be disturbed by obstacles. He at
once set to work to earn more than ever by his books and lectures. With
his characteristic generosity he brought his parents and his sisters to
live in his home, and made everybody welcome to his hospitality. The
"Poet's Journal," a poem of exquisite tenderness, was written here, and
"Hannah Thurston," a novel, of which fifteen thousand were soon sold.

Shortly after the beginning of our civil war, Mr. Taylor was made
Secretary of Legation at Russia. He was now forty years of age, loved,
well-to-do, and famous. His novels--"John Godfrey's Fortunes" and the
"Story of Kennett"--were both successful. The "Picture of St. John,"
rich and stronger than his other poems, added to his fame. But the
gifted and versatile man was breaking in health. Again he travelled
abroad, and wrote "Byways in Europe." On his return he translated, with
great care and study, "Faust," which will always be a monument to his
learning and literary skill. He published "Lars, a Norway pastoral," and
gave delightful lectures on German literature at Cornell University,
and Lowell and Peabody Institutes, at Boston and Baltimore.

At last he wearied of the care and constant expense of "Cedarcroft." He
needed to be near the New York libraries. Mr. Greeley had died, his
newspaper stock had declined, and he could not sell his home, as he had
hoped. There was no alternative but to go back in 1871 into the daily
work of journalism in the "Tribune" office. The rest which he had longed
for was never to come. For four years he worked untiringly, delivering
the Centennial Ode at our Exposition, and often speaking before learned
societies.

In 1878, President Hayes bestowed upon him a well-deserved honor, by
appointing him minister to Berlin. Germany rejoiced that a lover of her
life and literature had been sent to her borders. The best of New York
gathered to say good-by to the noted author. Arriving in Berlin, Emperor
William gave him cordial welcome, and Bismark made him a friend. A
pleasant residence was secured, and furniture purchased. At last he was
to find time to complete a long-desired work, the Lives of Goethe and
Schiller. "Prince Deukalion," his last noble poem, had just reached him.
All was ready for the best and strongest work of his life, when, lo! the
overworked brain and body gave way. He did not murmur. Only once, Dec.
19, he groaned, "I want--I want--oh, you know what I mean, that _stuff
of life_!" It was too late. At fifty-three the great heart, the
exquisite brain, the tired body, were still.

    "Dead he lay among his books;
    The peace of God was in his looks."

Germany as well as America wept over the bier of the once poor Quaker
lad, who travelled over Europe with scarce a shilling in his pocket,
now, by his own energy, brought to one of the highest positions in the
gift of his country. Dec. 22, the great of Germany gathered about his
coffin, Bertold Auerbach speaking beautiful words.

March 13, 1879, the dead poet lay in state in the City Hall at New York,
in the midst of assembled thousands. The following day the body was
borne to "Cedarcroft," and, surrounded by literary associates and tender
friends, laid to rest. Public memorial meetings were held in various
cities, where Holmes, Longfellow, Whittier, and others gave their loving
tributes. A devoted student, a successful diplomat, a true friend, a
noble poet, a gifted traveller, a man whose life will never cease to be
an inspiration.




CAPTAIN JAMES B. EADS.


On the steamship "Germanic" I played chess with the great civil
engineer, Captain Eads, stimulated by the thought that to beat him was
to defeat the man who had twice conquered the Mississippi. But I didn't
defeat him.

The building of a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Suez made famous the
Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps: so the opening-up of the mouth of the
Mississippi River has distinguished Captain Eads. To-day both these men
are struggling for the rare honor of joining, at the Isthmus of Panama,
the waters of the great Atlantic and Pacific; a magnificent scheme,
which, if successful, will save annually thousands of miles of dangerous
sea-voyage around Cape Horn, besides millions of money.

The "Great West" seems to delight in producing self-made men like
Lincoln, Grant, Eads, and others.

James B. Eads was born in Indiana in 1820. He is slender in form, neat
in dress, genial, courteous, and over sixty years of age. In 1833, his
father started down the Ohio River with his family, proposing to settle
in Wisconsin. The boat caught fire, and his scanty furniture and
clothing were burned. Young Eads barely escaped ashore with his
pantaloons, shirt, and cap. Taking passage on another boat, this boy of
thirteen landed at St. Louis with his parents; his little bare feet
first touching the rocky shore of the city on the very spot where he
afterwards located and built the largest steel bridge in the world, over
the Mississippi,--one of the most difficult feats of engineering ever
performed in America.

At the age of nine, young Eads made a short trip on the Ohio, when the
engineer of the steamboat explained to him so clearly the construction
of the steam-engine, that, before he was a year older, he built a little
working model of it, so perfect in its parts and movements, that his
schoolmates would frequently go home with him after school to see it
work. A locomotive engine driven by a concealed rat was one of his next
juvenile feats in mechanical engineering. From eight to thirteen he
attended school; after which, from necessity, he was placed as clerk in
a dry-goods store.

How few young people of the many to whom poverty denies an education,
either understand the value of the saying, "knowledge is power," or
exercise will sufficient to overcome obstacles. Willpower and thirst for
knowledge elevated General Garfield from driving canal horses to the
Presidency of the United States.

Over the store in St. Louis, where he was engaged, his employer lived.
He was an old bachelor, and, having observed the tastes of his clerk,
gave him his first book in engineering. The old gentleman's library
furnished evening companions for him during the five years he was thus
employed. Finally, his health failing, at the age of nineteen he went on
a Mississippi River steamer; from which time to the present day that
great river has been to him an all-absorbing study.

Soon afterwards he formed a partnership with a friend, and built a small
boat to raise cargoes of vessels sunken in the Mississippi. While this
boat was building, he made his first venture in submarine engineering,
on the lower rapids of the river, by the recovery of several hundred
tons of lead. He hired a scow or flat-boat, and anchored it over the
wreck. An experienced diver, clad in armor, who had been hired at
considerable expense in Buffalo, was lowered into the water; but the
rapids were so swift that the diver, though incased in the strong armor,
feared to be sunk to the bottom. Young Eads determined to succeed, and,
finding it impracticable to use the armor, went ashore, purchased a
whiskey-barrel, knocked out the head, attached the air-pump hose to it,
fastened several heavy weights to the open end of the barrel; then,
swinging it on a derrick, he had a practical diving-bell--the best use I
ever heard made of a whiskey-barrel.

Neither the diver, nor any of the crew, would go down in this
contrivance: so the dauntless young engineer, having full confidence in
what he had read in books, was lowered within the barrel down to the
bottom; the lower end of the barrel being open. The water was sixteen
feet deep, and very swift. Finding the wreck, he remained by it a full
hour, hitching ropes to pig-lead till a ton or more was safely hoisted
into his own boat. Then, making a signal by a small line attached to the
barrel, he was lifted on deck, and in command again. The sunken cargo
was soon successfully raised, and was sold, and netted a handsome
profit, which, increased by other successes, enabled energetic Eads to
build larger boats, with powerful pumps, and machinery on them for
lifting entire vessels. He surprised all his friends in floating even
immense sunken steamers--boats which had long been given up as lost.

When the Rebellion came, it was soon evident that a strong fleet must be
put upon Western rivers to assist our armies. Word came from the
government to Captain Eads to report in Washington. His thorough
knowledge of the "Father of Waters" and its tributaries, and his
practical suggestions, secured an order to build seven gunboats, and
soon after an order for the eighth was given.

In forty-eight hours after receiving this authority, his agents and
assistants were at work; and suitable ship-timber was felled in half a
dozen Western States for their hulls. Contracts were awarded to large
engine and iron works in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati; and
within one hundred days, eight powerful ironclad gunboats, carrying over
one hundred large cannon, and costing a million dollars, were achieving
victories no less important for the Mississippi valley than those which
Ericsson's famous "Cheese-box Monitor" afterwards won on the James
River.

These eight gunboats, Commodore Foote ably employed in his brave attacks
on Forts McHenry and Donaldson. They were the first ironclads the United
States ever owned. Captain Eads covered the boats with iron: Commodore
Foote covered them with glory.

Eads built not less than fourteen of these gunboats. During the war, the
models were exhibited by request to the German and other governments.
His next work was to throw across the mighty Mississippi River, nearly
half a mile wide, at St. Louis, a monstrous steel bridge, supported by
three arches, the spans of two being five hundred and two feet long, and
the central one five hundred and twenty feet. The huge piles were
ingeniously sunk in the treacherous sand, one hundred and thirty-six
feet below the flood-level to the solid rock, through ninety feet of
sand. This bridge and its approaches cost eighty millions of dollars,
and is used by ten or twelve railroad companies. Above the tracks is a
big street with carriage-roads, street-cars, and walks for
foot-passengers.

The honor of building the finest bridge in the world would have
satisfied most men, but not ambitious Captain Eads. He actually loved
the noble river in which De Soto, its discoverer, was buried, and fully
realized the vast, undeveloped resources of its rich valleys. Equally
well he understood what a gigantic work in the past the river and its
fifteen hundred sizable tributaries had accomplished in times of
freshets, by depositing soil and sand north of the original Gulf of
Mexico, forming an alluvial plain five hundred miles long, sixty miles
wide, and of unknown depth, and having a delta extending out into the
Gulf, sixty miles long, and as many miles wide, and probably a mile
deep. And yet this heroic man, although jealously opposed for years by
West Point engineers, having a sublime confidence in the laws of nature,
and actuated by intense desire to benefit mankind, dared to stand on the
immense sand-bars at the mouth of this defiant stream, and, making use
of the jetty system, bid the river itself dig a wide, deep channel into
the seas beyond, for the world's commerce.

Captain Eads, who had studied the improvements on the Danube, Maas, and
other European rivers, observed that all rivers flow faster in their
narrow channels, and carry along in the swift water, sand, gravel, and
even stones. This familiar law he applied at the South Pass of the
Mississippi River, where the waters, though deep above, escaped from the
banks into the Gulf, and spread sediment far and wide.

The water on the sand-bars of the three principal passes varied from
eight to thirteen feet in depth. Many vessels require twice the depth.
Two piers, twelve hundred feet apart, were built from land's end, a mile
into the sea. They were made from willows, timber, gravel, concrete, and
stone. Mattresses, a hundred feet long, from twenty-five to fifty feet
wide, and two feet thick, were constructed from small willows placed at
right angles, and bound securely together. These were floated into
position, and sunk with gravel, one mattress upon another, which the
river soon filled with sand that firmly held them in their place. The
top was finished with heavy concrete blocks, to resist the waves. These
piers are called "jetties," and the swift collected waters have already
carried over five million cubic yards of sand into the deep gulf, and
made a ship-way over thirty feet deep. The five million dollars paid by
the United States was little enough for so priceless a service.

       *       *       *       *       *

In June, 1884, Captain Eads received the Albert medal of the British
Society of Arts, the first American upon whom this honor has been
conferred. Before his great enterprise of the Tehuantepec ship railroad
had been completed, he died at Nassau, New Providence, Bahama Islands,
March 8, 1887, after a brief illness, of pneumonia, at the age of
sixty-seven.




[Illustration: JAMES WATT.]

JAMES WATT.


The history of inventors is generally the same old struggle with
poverty. Sir Richard Arkwright, the youngest of thirteen children, with
no education, a barber, shaving in a cellar for a penny to each
customer, dies worth two and one-half million dollars, after being
knighted by the King for his inventions in spinning. Elias Howe, Jr., in
want and sorrow, lives on beans in a London attic, and dies at
forty-five, having received over two million dollars from his
sewing-machines in thirteen years. Success comes only through hard work
and determined perseverance. The steps to honor, or wealth, or fame, are
not easy to climb.

The history of James Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine, is no
exception to the rule of struggling to win. He was born in the little
town of Greenock, Scotland, 1736. Too delicate to attend school, he was
taught reading by his mother, and a little writing and arithmetic by his
father. When six years of age, he would draw mechanical lines and
circles on the hearth, with a colored piece of chalk. His favorite play
was to take to pieces his little carpenter tools, and make them into
different ones. He was an obedient boy, especially devoted to his
mother, a cheerful and very intelligent woman, who always encouraged
him. She would say in any childish quarrels, "Let James speak; from him
I always hear the truth." Old George Herbert said, "One good mother is
worth a hundred schoolmasters"; and such a one was Mrs. Watt.

When sent to school, James was too sensitive to mix with rough boys, and
was very unhappy with them. When nearly fourteen, his parents sent him
to a friend in Glasgow, who soon wrote back that they must come for
their boy, for he told so many interesting stories that he had read,
that he kept the family up till very late at night.

His aunt wrote that he would sit "for an hour taking off the lid of the
teakettle, and putting it on, holding now a cup and now a silver spoon
over the steam, watching how it rises from the spout, and catching and
condensing the drops of hot water it falls into."

Before he was fifteen, he had read a natural philosophy twice through,
as well as every other book he could lay his hands on. He had made an
electrical machine, and startled his young friends by some sudden
shocks. He had a bench for his special use, and a forge, where he made
small cranes, pulleys, pumps, and repaired instruments used on ships. He
was fond of astronomy, and would lie on his back on the ground for
hours, looking at the stars.

Frail though he was in health, yet he must prepare himself to earn a
living. When he was eighteen, with many tender words from his mother,
her only boy started for Glasgow to learn the trade of making
mathematical instruments. In his little trunk, besides his "best
clothes," which were a ruffled shirt, a velvet waistcoat, and silk
stockings, were a leather apron and some carpenter tools. Here he found
a position with a man who sold and mended spectacles, repaired fiddles,
and made fishing nets and rods.

Finding that he could learn very little in this shop, an old
sea-captain, a friend of the family, took him to London. Here, day after
day, he walked the streets, asking for a situation; but nobody wanted
him. Finally he offered to work for a watchmaker without pay, till he
found a place to learn his trade. This he at last obtained with a Mr.
Morgan, to whom he agreed to give a hundred dollars for the year's
teaching. As his father was poorly able to help him, the conscientious
boy lived on two dollars a week, earning most of this pittance by rising
early, and doing odd jobs before his employer opened his shop in the
morning. He labored every evening until nine o'clock, except Saturday,
and was soon broken in health by hunger and overwork. His mother's heart
ached for him, but, like other poor boys, he must make his way alone.

At the end of the year he went to Glasgow to open a shop for himself;
but other mechanics were jealous of a new-comer, and would not permit
him to rent a place. A professor at the Glasgow University knew the
deserving young man, and offered him a room in the college, which he
gladly accepted. He and the lad who assisted him could earn only ten
dollars a week, and there was little sale for the instruments after they
were made: so, following the example of his first master, he began to
make and mend flutes, fiddles, and guitars, though he did not know one
note from another. One of his customers wanted an organ built, and at
once Watt set to work to learn the theory of music. When the organ was
finished, a remarkable one for those times, the young machinist had
added to it several inventions of his own.

This earning a living was a hard matter; but it brought energy,
developed thought, and probably helped more than all else to make him
famous. The world in general works no harder than circumstances compel.

Poverty is no barrier to falling in love, and, poor though he was, he
now married Margaret Miller, his cousin, whom he had long tenderly
loved. Their home was plain and small; but she had the sweetest of
dispositions, was always happy, and made his life sunny even in its
darkest hours of struggling.

Meantime he had made several intellectual friends in the college, one of
whom talked much to him about a steam-carriage. Steam was not by any
means unknown. Hero, a Greek physician who lived at Alexandria a century
before the Christian era, tells how the ancients used it. Some crude
engines were made in Watt's time, the best being that of Thomas
Newcomen, called an atmospheric engine, and used in raising water from
coal-mines. It could do comparatively little, however; and many of the
mines were now useless because the water nearly drowned the miners.

Watt first experimented with common vials for steam-reservoirs, and
canes hollowed out for steam-pipes. For months he went on working night
and day, trying new plans, testing the powers of steam, borrowing a
brass syringe a foot long for his cylinder, till finally the essential
principles of the steam-engine were born in his mind. He wrote to a
friend, "My whole thoughts are bent on this machine. I can think of
nothing else." He hired an old cellar, and for two months worked on his
model. His tools were poor; his foreman died; and the engine, when
completed, leaked in all parts. His old business of mending instruments
had fallen off; he was badly in debt, and had no money to push forward
the invention. He believed he had found the right principle; but he
could not let his family starve. Sick at heart, and worn in body, he
wrote: "Of all things in life there is nothing more foolish than
inventing." Poor Watt!

His great need was money,--money to buy food, money to buy tools, money
to give him leisure for thought. Finally, a friend induced Dr. Roebuck,
an iron-dealer, to become Watt's partner, pay his debts of five thousand
dollars, take out a patent, and perfect the engine. Watt went to London
for his patent, but so long was he delayed by indifferent officials,
that he wrote home to his young wife, quite discouraged. With a brave
heart in their pinching poverty, Margaret wrote back, "I beg that you
will not make yourself uneasy, though things should not succeed to your
wish. If the engine will not do, _something else will; never despair_."

On his return home, for six months he worked in setting up his engine.
The cylinder, having been badly cast, was almost worthless; the piston,
though wrapped in cork, oiled rags, and old hat, let the air in and the
steam out; and the model proved a failure. "To-day," he said, "I enter
the thirty-fifth year of my life, and I think I have hardly yet done
thirty-five pence worth of good in the world: but I cannot help it." The
path to success was not easy.

Dr. Roebuck was getting badly in debt, and could not aid him as he had
promised; so Watt went sadly back to surveying, a business he had taken
up to keep the wolf from the door. In feeble health, out in the worst
weather, his clothes often wet through, life seemed almost unbearable.
When absent on one of these surveying excursions, word was brought that
Margaret, his beloved wife, was dead. He was completely unnerved. Who
would care for his little children, or be to him what he had often
called her, "the comfort of his life"? After this he would often pause
on the threshold of his humble home to summon courage to enter, since
she was no longer there to welcome him. She had shared his poverty, but
was never to share his fame and wealth.

And now came a turning-point in his life, though the struggles were by
no means over. At Birmingham, lived Matthew Boulton, a rich
manufacturer, eight years older than Watt. He employed over a thousand
men in his hardware establishment, and in making clocks, and reproducing
rare vases. He was a friend of Benjamin Franklin, with whom he had
corresponded about the steam-engine, and he had also heard of Watt and
his invention through Dr. Roebuck. He was urged to assist. But Watt
waited three years longer for aid. Nine years had passed since he made
his invention; he was in debt, without business, and in poor health.
What could he do? He seemed likely to finish life without any success.

Finally Boulton was induced to engage in the manufacture of engines,
giving Watt one-third of the profits, if any were made. One engine was
constructed by Boulton's men, and it worked admirably. Soon orders came
in for others, as the mines were in bad condition, and the water must be
pumped out. Fortunes, like misfortunes, rarely come singly. Just at this
time the Russian Government offered Watt five thousand dollars yearly if
he would go to that country. Such a sum was an astonishment. How he
wished Margaret could have lived to see this proud day!

He could not well be spared from the company now; so he lived on at
Birmingham, marrying a second time, Anne Macgregor of Scotland, to care
for his children and his home. She was a very different woman from
Margaret Miller; a neat housekeeper, but seemingly lacking in the
lovable qualities which make sunshine even in the plainest home.

As soon as the Boulton and Watt engines were completed, and success
seemed assured, obstacles arose from another quarter. Engines had been
put into several Cornwall mines, which bore the singular names of "Ale
and Cakes," "Wheat Fanny," "Wheat Abraham," "Cupboard," and "Cook's
Kitchen." As soon as the miners found that these engines worked well,
they determined to destroy the patent by the cry that Boulton and Watt
had a monopoly of a thing which the world needed. Petitions were
circulated, giving great uneasiness to both the partners. Several
persons also stole the principle of the engine, either by bribing the
engine-men, or by getting them drunk so that they would tell the secrets
of their employers. The patent was constantly infringed upon. Every hour
was a warfare. Watt said, "The rascality of mankind is almost past
belief."

Meantime Boulton, with his many branches of business, and the low state
of trade, had gotten deeply in debt, and was pressed on every side for
the tens of thousands which he owed. Watt was nearly insane with this
trouble. He wrote to Boulton: "I cannot rest in my bed until these money
matters have assumed some determinate form. I am plagued with the blues.
I am quite eaten up with the mulligrubs."

Soon after this, Watt invented the letter-copying press, which at first
was greatly opposed, because it was thought that forged names and
letters would result. After a time, however, there was great demand for
it. Watt was urged by Boulton to invent a rotary engine; but this was
finally done by their head workman, William Murdock, the inventor of
lighting by gas. He also made the first model of a locomotive, which
frightened the village preacher nearly out of his senses, as it came
puffing down the street one evening. Though devoted to his employers,
sometimes working all night for them, they counselled him to give up all
thought about his locomotive, lest by developing it he might in time
withdraw from their firm. Alas for the selfishness of human nature! He
was never made a partner, and, though he thought out many inventions
after his day's work was done, he remained faithful to their service
till the end of his life. Mr. Buckle tells this good story of Murdock.
Having found that fish-skins could be used instead of isinglass, he came
to London to inform the brewers, and took board in a handsome house.
Fancying himself in his laboratory, he went on with his experiments.
Imagine the horror of the landlady when she entered his room, and found
her elegant wall-paper covered with wet fish-skins, hung up to dry! The
inventor took an immediate departure with his skins. When the rotary
engine was finished, the partners sought to obtain a charter, when lo!
The millers and mealmen all opposed it, because, said they, "If flour is
ground by steam, the wind and water-mills will stop, and men will be
thrown out of work." Boulton and Watt viewed with contempt this new
obstacle of ignorance. "Carry out this argument," said the former, "and
we must annihilate water-mills themselves, and go back again to the
grinding of corn by hand labor." Presently a large mill was burned by
incendiaries, with a loss of fifty thousand dollars.

Watt about this time invented his "Parallel Motion," and the Governor,
for regulating the speed of the engine. Large orders began to come in,
even from America and the West Indies; but not till they had expended
two hundred thousand dollars were there any profits. Times were
brightening for the hard-working inventor. He lost his despondency, and
did not long for death, as he had previously.

After a time, he built a lovely home at Heathfield, in the midst of
forty acres of trees, flowers, and tasteful walks. Here gathered some of
the greatest minds of the world,--Dr. Priestley who discovered oxygen,
Sir William Herschel, Dr. Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, and scores of others,
who talked of science and literature. Mrs. Watt so detested dirt, and so
hated the sight of her husband's leather apron and soiled hands, that he
built for himself a "garret," where he could work unmolested by his
wife, or her broom and dustpan. She never allowed even her two pug-dogs
to cross the hall without wiping their feet on the mat. She would seize
and carry away her husband's snuff-box, wherever she found it, because
she considered snuff as dirt. At night, when she retired from the
dining-room, if Mr. Watt did not follow at the time fixed by her, she
sent a servant to remove the lights. If friends were present, he would
say meekly, "We must go," and walk slowly out of the room. Such conduct
must have been about as trying as the failure of his engines. For days
together he would stay in his garret, not even coming down to his meals,
cooking his food in his frying-pan and Dutch oven, which he kept by him.
One cannot help wondering, whether, sometimes, as he worked up there
alone, he did not think of Margaret, whose face would have brightened
even that dingy room.

A crushing sorrow now came to him. His only daughter, Jessie, died, and
then his pet son, Gregory, the dearest friend of Humphry Davy, a young
man of brilliant scholarship and oratorical powers. Boulton died before
his partner, loved and lamented by all, having followed the precept he
once gave to Watt: "Keep your mind and your heart pleasant, if possible;
for the way to go through life sweetly is not to regard rubs."

Watt died peacefully Aug. 19, 1819, in his eighty-third year, and was
buried in beautiful Handsworth Church. Here stands Chantrey's
masterpiece, a sitting statue of the great inventor. Another is in
Westminster Abbey. When Lord Brougham was asked to write the inscription
for this monument, he said, "I reckon it one of the chief honors of my
life." Sir James Mackintosh placed him "at the head of all inventors in
all ages and nations"; and Wordsworth regarded him, "Considering both
the magnitude and the universality of his genius, as perhaps the most
extraordinary man that this country has ever produced."

After all the struggle came wealth and fame. The mine opens up its
treasures only to those who are persevering enough to dig into it; and
life itself yields little, only to such as have the courage and the will
to overcome obstacles.

Heathfield has passed into other hands; but the quiet garret is just as
James Watt left it at death. Here is a large sculpture machine, and many
busts partly copied. Here is his handkerchief tied to the beam on which
he rested his head. The beam itself is crumbling to dust. Little pots of
chemicals on the shelves are hardened by age. A bunch of withered grapes
is on a dish, and the ashes are in the grate as when he sat before it.
Close by is the hair trunk of his beloved Gregory, full of his
schoolbooks, his letters, and his childish toys. This the noble old man
kept beside him to the last.




SIR JOSIAH MASON.


One sunny morning in June, I went out five miles from the great
manufacturing city of Birmingham, England, to the pretty town called
Erdington, to see the Mason Orphanage. I found an immense brick
structure, with high Gothic towers, in the midst of thirteen acres of
velvety lawn. Over the portals of the building were the words, "DO DEEDS
OF LOVE." Three hundred happy children were scattered over the premises,
the girls in brown dresses with long white aprons: some were in the
great play-room, some doing the housework, and some serving at dinner.
Sly Cupid creeps into an orphan-asylum even; and the matron had to watch
carefully lest the biggest pieces of bread and butter be given by the
girls to the boys they liked best.

In the large grounds, full of flowers and trees, among the children he
so tenderly loved and called by name, the founder, Sir Josiah Mason, and
his wife, are buried, in a beautiful mausoleum, a Gothic chapel, with
stone carving and stained-glass windows.

[Illustration: SIR JOSIAH MASON.]

And who was this founder?

In a poor, plain home in Kidderminster, Feb. 23 1795, Sir Josiah Mason
was born. His father was a weaver, and his mother the daughter of a
laborer. At eight years of age, with of course little education, the boy
began the struggle of earning a living. His mother fitted up two baskets
for him, and these he filled with baker's cakes, and sold them about the
streets. Little Joe became so great a favorite, that the buyers often
gave him an extra penny. Finally a donkey was obtained; and a bag
containing cakes in one end, and fruit and vegetables in the other, was
strapped across his back. In this way, for seven years, Joe peddled from
door to door. Did anybody ever think then that he would be rich and
famous?

The poor mother helped him with her scanty means, and both parents
allowed him to keep all he could make. His father's advice used to be,
"Joe, thee'st got a few pence; never let anybody know how much thee'st
got in thee pockets." And well the boy carried out his father's
injunction in afterlife.

When he was fifteen, his brother had become a confirmed invalid, and
needed a constant attendant. The father was away at the shop, and the
mother busy with her cares: so Joe, who thought of others always before
himself, determined to be nurse, and earn some money also. He set about
becoming a shoemaker, having learned the trade from watching an old man
who lived near their house; but he could make only a bare pittance. Then
he taught himself writing, and earned a trifle for composing letters and
Valentines for his poor neighbors. This money he spent in books, for he
was eager for an education. He read no novels nor poetry, but books of
history, science, and theology.

Finally the mother started a small grocery and bakery, and Joe assisted.
Many of their customers were tramps and beggars, who could buy only an
ounce or half-ounce of tea; but even a farthing was welcome to the
Masons. Later, Josiah took up carpet-weaving and blacksmithing; but he
could never earn more than five dollars a week, and he became restless
and eager for a broader field. He had courage, was active and
industrious, and had good habits.

He was now twenty-one. He decided to go to Birmingham on Christmas Day,
to visit an uncle whom he had never seen. He went, and this was the
turning-point of his life. His uncle gave him work in making gilt toys;
and, what was perhaps better still for the poor young man, he fell in
love with his cousin Annie Griffiths, and married her the following
year. This marriage proved a great blessing, and for fifty-two years,
childless, they two were all in all to each other. For six years the
young husband worked early and late, with the promise of succeeding to
the small business; but at the end of these years the promise was
broken, and Mason found himself at thirty, out of work, and owning less
than one hundred dollars.

Walking down the street one day in no very happy frame of mind, a
stranger stepped up to him, and said, "Mr. Mason?"

"Yes," was the answer.

"You are now, I understand, without employment. I know some one who
wants just such a man as you, and I will introduce him to you. Will you
meet me to-morrow morning at Mr. Harrison's, the split-ring maker?"

"I will."

The next day the stranger said to Mr. Harrison, "I have brought you the
very man you want."

The business man eyed Mason closely, saying, "I've had a good many young
men come here; but they are afraid of dirtying their fingers."

Mason opened his somewhat calloused hands, and, looking at them, said,
"Are _you_ ashamed of dirtying yourselves to get your own living?"

Mason was at once employed, and a year later Mr. Harrison offered him
the business at twenty-five hundred dollars. Several men, observing the
young man's good qualities, had offered to loan him money when he should
go into trade for himself. He bethought him of these friends, and called
upon them; but they all began to make excuse. The world's proffers of
help or friendship we can usually discount by half. Seeing that not a
dollar could be borrowed, Mr. Harrison generously offered to wait for
the principal till it could be earned out of the profits. This was a
noble act, and Mr. Mason never ceased to be grateful for it.

He soon invented a machine for bevelling hoop-rings, and made five
thousand dollars the first year from its use. Thenceforward his life
reads like a fairy-tale. One day, seeing some steel pens on a card, in a
shop-window, he went in and purchased one for twelve cents. That evening
he made three, and enclosed one in a letter to Perry of London, the
maker, paying eighteen cents' postage, which now would be only two
cents.

His pen was such an improvement that Mr. Perry at once wrote for all he
could make. In a few years, Mason became the greatest pen-maker in the
world, employing a thousand persons, and turning out over five million
pens per week. Sixty tons of pens, containing one and a half million
pens to the ton, were often in his shops. What a change from peddling
cakes from door to door in Kidderminster!

Later he became the moneyed partner in the great electro-plating trade
of the Elkingtons, whose beautiful work at the Centennial Exposition we
all remember.

Mr. Mason never forgot his laborers. When he established copper-smelting
works in Wales, he built neat cottages for the workmen, and schools for
the three hundred and fifty children. The Welsh refused to allow their
children to attend school where they would be taught English. Mr. Mason
overcame this by distributing hats, bonnets, and other clothing to the
pupils, and, once in school, they needed no urging to remain. The
manufacturer was as hard a worker as any of his men. For years he was
the first person to come to his factory, and the last to leave it. He
was quick to decide a matter, and act upon it, and the most rigid
economist of time. He allowed nobody to waste his precious hours with
idle talk, nor did he waste theirs. He believed, with Shakespeare, that
"Talkers are no good doers." His hours were regular. He took much
exercise on foot, and lived with great simplicity. He was always
cheerful, and had great self-control. Finally he began to ask himself
how he could best use his money before he died. He remembered his poor
struggling mother in his boyish days. His first gift should be a home
for aged women--a noble thought!--his next should be for orphans, as he
was a great lover of children. For eight years he watched the beautiful
buildings of his Orphanage go up, and then saw the happy children
gathered within, bringing many of them from Kidderminster, who were as
destitute as himself when a boy. He seemed to know and love each child,
for whose benefit he had included even his own lovely home, a million
dollars in all. The annual income for the Orphanage is about fifty
thousand dollars. What pleasure he must have had as he saw them swinging
in the great playgrounds, where he had even thought to make triple
columns so that they could the better play hide-and-seek! At eight, he
was trudging the streets to earn bread; they should have an easier lot
through his generosity.

For this and other noble deeds Queen Victoria made him a knight. What
would his poor mother have said to such an honor for her boy, had she
been alive!

What would the noble man, now over eighty, do next with his money? He
recalled how hard it had been for him to obtain knowledge. The colleges
were patronized largely by the rich. He would build a great School of
Science, free to all who depended upon themselves for support. They
might study mathematics, languages, chemistry, civil engineering,
without distinction of sex or race. For five years he watched the
elegant brick and stone structure in Birmingham rise from its
foundations. And then, Oct. 1, 1880, in the midst of assembled
thousands, and in the presence of such men as Fawcett, Bright, and Max
Muller, Mason Science College was formally opened. Professor Huxley, R.
W. Dale, and others made eloquent addresses. In the evening, a thousand
of the best of England gathered at the college, made beautiful by
flowers and crimson drapery. On a dais sat the noble giver, in his
eighty-sixth year. The silence was impressive as the grand old man
arose, handing the key of his college, his million-dollar gift, to the
trustees. Surely truth is stranger than fiction! To what honor and
renown had come the humble peddler!

On the following 25th of June, Sir Josiah Mason was borne to his grave,
in the Erdington mausoleum. Three hundred and fifty orphan-children
followed his coffin, which was carried by eight servants or workingmen,
as he had requested. After the children had sung a hymn, they covered
the coffin-lid with flowers, which he so dearly loved. He sleeps in the
midst of his gifts, one of England's noble benefactors.




BERNARD PALISSY.


In the Louvre in Paris, preserved among almost priceless gems, are
several pieces of exquisite pottery called Palissy ware. Thousands
examine them every year, yet but few know the struggles of the man who
made such beautiful works of art.

Born in the south of France in 1509, in a poor, plain home, Bernard
Palissy grew to boyhood, sunny-hearted and hopeful, learning the trade
of painting on glass from his father. He had an ardent love for nature,
and sketched rocks, birds, and flowers with his boyish hands. When he
was eighteen, he grew eager to see the world, and, with a tearful
good-by from his mother, started out to seek his fortune. For ten years
he travelled from town to town, now painting on glass for some rich
lord, and now sketching for a peasant family in return for food.
Meantime he made notes about vegetation, and the forming of crystals in
the mountains of Auvergne, showing that he was an uncommon boy.

[Illustration: BERNARD PALISSY.]

Finally, like other young people, he fell in love, and was married at
twenty-eight. He could not travel about the country now, so he settled
in the little town of Saintes. Then a baby came into their humble home.
How could he earn more money, since the poor people about him had no
need for painted glass? Every time he tried to plan some new way to grow
richer, his daily needs weighed like a millstone around his neck.

About this time he was shown an elegant enamelled cup from Italy. "What
if I could be the first and only maker of such ware in France?" thought
he. But he had no knowledge of clay, and no money to visit Italy, where
alone the secret could be obtained.

The Italians began making such pottery about the year 1300. Two
centuries earlier, the Pagan King of Majorca, in the Mediterranean Sea,
was said to keep confined in his dungeons twenty thousand Christians.
The Archbishop of Pisa incited his subjects to make war upon such an
infidel king, and after a year's struggle, the Pisans took the island,
killed the ruler, and brought home his heir, and great booty. Among the
spoils were exquisite Moorish plates, which were so greatly admired that
they were hung on the walls of Italian churches. At length the people
learned to imitate this Majolica ware, which brought very high prices.

The more Palissy thought about this beautiful pottery, the more
determined he became to attempt its making. But he was like a man
groping in the dark. He had no knowledge of what composed the enamel on
the ware; but he purchased some drugs, and ground them to powder. Then
he bought earthen pots, broke them in pieces, spread the powder upon the
fragments, and put them in a furnace to bake. He could ill afford to
build a furnace, or even to buy the earthenware; but he comforted his
young wife with the thought that as soon as he had discovered what would
produce white enamel they would become rich.

When the pots had been heated sufficiently, as he supposed, he took them
out, but, lo! the experiment had availed nothing. Either he had not hit
upon the right ingredients, or the baking had been too long or too short
in time. He must of course try again. For days and weeks he pounded and
ground new materials; but no success came. The weeks grew into months.
Finally his supply of wood became exhausted, and the wife was losing her
patience with these whims of an inventor. They were poor, and needed
present income rather than future prospects. She had ceased to believe
Palissy's stories of riches coming from white enamel. Had she known that
she was marrying an inventor, she might well have hesitated, lest she
starve in the days of experimenting; but now it was too late.

His wood used up, Palissy was obliged to make arrangements with a potter
who lived three miles away, to burn the broken pieces in his furnace.
His enthusiasm made others hopeful; so that the promise to pay when
white enamel was discovered was readily accepted. To make matters sure
of success at this trial, he sent between three and four hundred pieces
of earthenware to his neighbor's furnace. Some of these would surely
come back with the powder upon them melted, and the surface would be
white. Both himself and wife waited anxiously for the return of the
ware; she much less hopeful than he, however. When it came, he says in
his journal, "I received nothing but shame and loss, because it turned
out good for nothing."

Two years went by in this almost hopeless work, then a third,--three
whole years of borrowing money, wood, and chemicals; three years of
consuming hope and desperate poverty. Palissy's family had suffered
extremely. One child had died, probably from destitution. The poor wife
was discouraged, and at last angered at his foolishness. Finally the
pottery fever seemed to abate, and Palissy went back to his drudgery of
glass-painting and occasional surveying. Nobody knew the struggle it had
cost to give up the great discovery; but it must be done.

Henry II., who was then King of France, had placed a new tax on salt,
and Palissy was appointed to make maps of all the salt-marshes of the
surrounding country. Some degree of comfort now came back to his family.
New clothes were purchased for the children, and the overworked wife
repented of her lack of patience. When the surveying was completed, a
little money had been saved, but, alas! the pottery fever had returned.

Three dozen new earthen pots were bought, chemicals spread over them as
before, and these taken to a glass-furnace, where the heat would be much
greater. He again waited anxiously, and when they were returned, some of
the powder had actually melted, and run over the earthenware. This added
fuel to the flame of his hope and ambition. And now, for two whole years
more, he went between his house and the glass-furnace, always hoping,
always failing.

His home had now become like a pauper's. For five years he had chased
this will-o'-the-wisp of white enamel; and the only result was the
sorrow of his relatives and the scorn of his neighbors. Finally he
promised his heart-broken wife that he would make but one more trial,
and if this failed, he would give up experimenting, and support her and
the children. He resolved that this should be an almost superhuman
effort. In some unknown way he raised the money for new pots and three
hundred mixtures of chemicals. Then, with the feelings of a man who has
but one chance for life, he walked beside the person who carried his
precious stock to the furnace. He sat down before the mouth of the great
hot oven, and waited four long hours. With what a sinking heart he
watched the pieces as they were taken out! He hardly dared look, because
it would probably be the old story of failure. But, lo! some were
melted, and as they hardened, oh, joy unspeakable, they turned white!
He hastened home with unsteady step, like one intoxicated, to tell his
wife the overwhelming truth. Surely he could not stop now in this great
work; and all must be done in secret, lest other potters learn the art.

Fears, no doubt, mingled with the new-born hopes of Mrs. Palissy, for
there was no regular work before her husband, and no steady income for
hungry little mouths. Besides, he must needs build a furnace in the shed
adjoining their home. But how could he obtain the money? Going to the
brick yard, he pledged some of the funds he hoped to receive in the
future, and brought home the bricks upon his back. Then he spent seven
long months experimenting in clay vessels, that he might get the best
shapes and quality to take the enamel. For another month, from early
morning till late at night, he pounded his preparations of tin, lead,
iron, and copper, and mixed them, as he hoped, in proper proportions.
When his furnace was ready, he put in his clay pots, and seated himself
before the mouth.

All day and all night, he fed the fire, his little children bringing him
soup, which was all the food the house afforded. A second day and night
he watched the results eagerly; but the enamel did not melt. Covered
with perspiration, and faint from loss of sleep and food, with the
desperation of hope that is akin to despair, for six days and six
nights, catching scarcely a moment of sleep, he watched the earthen
pots; but still the enamel did not melt. At last, thinking that his
proportions in his mixtures might have been wrong, he began once more to
pound and grind the materials without letting his furnace cool. His clay
vessels which he had spent seven months in making were also useless, so
he hastened to the shops, and bought new ones.

The family were now nearly frantic with poverty and the pottery madness
of the father. To make matters quite unbearable, the wood had given out,
and the furnace-fires must not stop. Almost wild with hope deferred, and
the necessities of life pressing upon him, Palissy tore up the fence
about his garden, and thrust it into the furnace-mouth. Still the enamel
did not melt. He rushed into the house, and began breaking up the table
and chairs for fuel. His wife and children were horrified. They ran
through the streets, crying out that Palissy was tearing the house down,
and had become crazy. The neighbors gathered, and begged him to desist,
but all to no purpose. He tore up the floors of the house, and threw
them in. The town jeered at him, and said, "It is right that he die of
hunger, seeing that he has left off following his trade." He was
exhausted and dried up by the heat of the furnace; but still he could
not yield. Finally the enamel melted. But now he was more crazy than
before. He must go forward, come what might.

With his family nearer than ever to starvation, he hired an assistant
potter, promising the old promise,--to pay when the discovery had been
perfected. The town of Saintes must have become familiar with that
promise. An innkeeper boarded the potter for six months, and charged it
to Palissy, to be paid, like all the other bills, in the future.
Probably Mrs. Palissy did not wish to board the assistant, even had she
possessed the necessary food. At the end of the six months the potter
departed, receiving, as pay, nearly all Palissy's wearing-apparel, which
probably was scarcely worth carrying away.

He now felt obliged to build an improved furnace, tearing down the old
one to recover the bricks, nearly turned to stone by the intense heat.
His hands were fearfully bruised and cut in the work. He begged and
borrowed more money, and once more started his furnace, with the boast
that this time he would draw three or four hundred francs from it. When
the ware was drawn out, the creditors came, eager for their share; but,
alas! there was no share for them. The mortar had been full of flints,
which adhered to the vessels; and Palissy broke the spoiled lot in
pieces. The neighbors called him a fool; the wife joined in the
maledictions--and who could blame her?

Under all this disappointment his spirit gave way, and he fled to his
chamber, and threw himself upon the bed. Six of his children had died
from want during the last ten years of struggle. What agony for the fond
mother! "I was so wasted in person," he quaintly wrote afterwards,
"that there was no form nor prominence of muscle on my arms or legs;
also the said legs were throughout of one size, so that the garters with
which I tied my stockings were at once, when I walked, down upon my
heels, with the stockings too. I was despised and mocked by all."

But the long lane turned at last. He stopped for a year, and took up his
old work to support his dying family, and then perfected his discovery.
For five or six years there were many failures,--the furnaces were too
hot, or the proportions were wrong; but finally the work became very
beautiful. His designs from nature were perfect, and his coloring
marvellous. His fame soon spread abroad; and such nobles as Montmorenci,
who stood next in rank to the King, and counts and barons, were his
patrons. He designed tiles for the finest palaces, ideal heads of the
Saviour, and dainty forms from Greek mythology.

Invited by Catherine de Medicis, wife of King Henry II., Palissy removed
to Paris, and was thenceforward called "Bernard of the Tuileries." He
was now rich and famous. What a change from that day when his
half-starved wife and children fled along the streets of Saintes, their
furniture broken up for furnace-fires! And yet, but for this blind
devotion to a single object, he would have remained a poor, unknown
glass-painter all his life. While in Paris, he published two or three
books which showed wide knowledge of history, mines, springs, metals,
and philosophy. He founded a Museum of Natural History, and for eight
years gave courses of lectures, attended by all the learned men of the
day. When his great learning was commented upon, he replied, "I have had
no other book than the sky and the earth, known to all." A wonderful man
indeed!

All his life Palissy was a devoted Huguenot, not fearing to read his
Bible, and preach to the people daily from it. Once he was imprisoned at
Bordeaux, and but for his genius, and his necessity to the beautifying
of palaces and chapels, he would have been put to death. When he was
seventy-six, under the brutal Henry III., he was shut up in the
Bastille. After nearly four years, the curled and vain monarch visited
him, and said, "My good man, you have been forty-five years in the
service of the Queen my mother, or in mine, and we have suffered you to
live in your own religion, amidst all the executions and the massacres.
Now, however, I am so pressed by the Guise party and my people, that I
have been compelled, in spite of myself, to imprison these two poor
women and you; they are to be burnt to-morrow, and you also, if you will
not be converted."

"Sire," answered the old man, "you have said several times that you feel
pity for me; but it is I who pity you, who have said, 'I am compelled.'
That is not speaking like a King. These girls and I, who have part in
the kingdom of heaven, we will teach you to talk royally. The Guisarts,
all your people, and yourself, cannot compel a potter to bow down to
images of clay."

The two girls were burnt a few months afterward. The next year, 1589,
Henry III. was stabbed by a monk who knelt before his throne; and the
same year, Palissy died in the Bastille, at the age of eighty.




[Illustration: THORWALDSEN.]

BERTEL THORWALDSEN.


A few months ago we visited a plain old house in Copenhagen, the boyhood
home of the great Danish sculptor. Here he worked with his father, a
poor wood-carver, who, thinking his boy would be a more skilful workman
if he learned to draw, sent him to the Free Royal Academy of Fine Arts
when he was twelve years old. At the end of four years he took a prize,
and the fact was mentioned in the newspapers. The next day, one of the
teachers asked, "Thorwaldsen, is it your brother who has carried off the
prize?"

Bertel's cheeks colored with pride as he said, "No, sir; it is I." The
teacher changed his tone, and replied, "Mr. Thorwaldsen, you will go up
immediately to the first rank."

Years afterward, when he had become famous, he said no praise was ever
so sweet as being called "Mr." when he was poor and unknown.

Two years later, he won another prize; but he was now obliged to stay at
home half the time to help support the large family. Obtaining a small
gold medal from the Academy, although so modest that, after the
examination, he escaped from the midst of the candidates by a private
staircase, he determined to try for the large gold medal. If he could
obtain this, he would receive a hundred and twenty dollars a year for
three years, and study art in Italy. He at once began to give
drawing-lessons, taught modelling to wealthy boys, and helped illustrate
books, working from early morning till late at night. He was rarely seen
to smile, so hard was the struggle for daily bread. But he tried for the
medal, and won.

What visions of fame must have come before him now, as he said good-by
to his poor parents, whom, alas, he was never to see again, and, taking
his little dog Hector, started for far-away Italy! When he arrived, he
was so ill and homesick that several times he decided to give up art and
go back. He copied diligently the works of the old masters, and tried in
vain to earn a little money. He sent some small works of his own to
Copenhagen; but nobody bought them. He made "Jason with the Golden
Fleece," and, when no one ordered it, the discouraged artist broke it in
pieces. The next year he modelled another Jason, a lady furnishing the
means; and while everybody praised it, and Canova said, "This young Dane
has produced a work in a new and grand style," it did not occur to any
one to buy the statue in marble.

An artist could not live on praise alone. Anxious days came and went,
and he was destitute and wretched. He must leave Rome, and go back to
the wood-carving in Copenhagen; for no one wanted beautiful things,
unless the maker was famous. He deferred going from week to week, till
at last his humble furniture had been sold, and his trunks waited at the
door. As he was leaving the house, his travelling companion said to him,
"We must wait till to-morrow, from a mistake in our passports."

A few hours later, Mr. Thomas Hope, an English banker, entered his
studio, and, struck with the grandeur of his model of Jason, asked the
cost in marble. "Six hundred sequins" (over twelve hundred dollars), he
answered, not daring to hope for such good fortune. "That is not enough;
you should ask eight," said the generous man, who at once ordered it.

And this was the turning-point in Bertel's life. How often a rich man
might help a struggling artist, and save a genius to the world, as did
this banker! Young Thorwaldsen now made the acquaintance of the Danish
ambassador to Naples, who introduced him to the family of Baron Wilhelm
von Humboldt, where the most famous people in Rome gathered. Soon a
leading countess commissioned him to cut four marble statues,--Bacchus,
Ganymede, Apollo, and Venus. Two years later, he was made professor in
the Royal Academy of Florence.

The Academy of Copenhagen now sent him five hundred dollars as an
expression of their pride in him. How much more he needed it when he was
near starving, all those nine years in Rome! The bashful student had
become the genial companion and interesting talker. Louis of Bavaria,
who made Munich one of the art centres of the world, was his admirer and
friend. The Danish King urged him to return to Copenhagen; but, as the
Quirinal was to be decorated with great magnificence, Rome could not
spare him. For this, he made in three months his famous "Entry of
Alexander into Babylon," and soon after his exquisite bas-reliefs,
"Night" and "Morning,"--the former, a goddess carrying in her arms two
children, Sleep and Death; the latter, a goddess flying through the air,
scattering flowers with both hands.

In 1816, when he was forty-six, he finished his Venus, after having made
_thirty_ models of the figure. He threw away the first attempt, and
devoted three years to the completion of the second. Three statues were
made, one of which is at Chatsworth, the elegant home of the Duke of
Devonshire; and one was lost at sea. A year later, he carved his
exquisite Byron, now at Trinity College, Cambridge.

He was now made a member of three other famous academies. Having been
absent from Denmark twenty-three years, the King urged his return for a
visit, at least. The Royal Palace of Charlottenburg was prepared for his
reception The students of the Academy escorted him with bands of music,
cannon were fired, poems read, cantatas sung; and the King created him
councillor of state.

Was the wood-carver's son proud of all these honors? No. The first
person he met at the palace was the old man who had served as a model
for the boys when Thorwaldsen was at school. So overcome was he as he
recalled those days of toil and poverty, that he fell upon the old man's
neck, and embraced him heartily.

After some of the grandest work of his life in the Frue Kirke,--Christ
and the Twelve Apostles, and others,--he returned to Rome, visiting, on
the way, Alexander of Russia, who, after Thorwaldsen had made his bust,
presented the artist with a diamond ring.

Although a Protestant, accounted now the greatest living sculptor, he
was made president of the Academy of St. Luke, a position held by Canova
when he was alive, and was commissioned to build the monument of Pius
VII. in St. Peters. Mendelssohn, the great composer, had become his warm
friend, and used to play for him as he worked in his studio. Sir Walter
Scott came to visit the artist, and as the latter could speak scarcely a
word of English, the two shook hands heartily, and clapped each other on
the shoulder as they parted.

When Thorwaldsen was sixty-eight years old, he left Rome to end his
days among his own people. The enthusiasm on his arrival was unbounded.
The whole city waited nearly three days for his coming. Boats decked
with flowers went out to meet him, and so many crowded on board his
vessel that it was feared she would sink. The members of the Academy
came in a body; and the crowd took the horses from the carriage, and
drew it themselves through the streets to the Palace of Charlottenburg.
In the evening there was a grand torchlight procession, followed by a
constant round of parties.

So beset was he with invitations to dinner, that, to save a little time
for himself, he told his servant Wilkins, that he would dine with him
and his wife. Wilkins, greatly confused, replied, "What would the world
think if it found out that the chancellor dined with his servant?"

"The world--the world! Have I not told you a thousand times that I don't
care in the least what the world thinks about these things?" Sometimes
he refused even to dine with the King. Finding at last that society
would give him no rest, he went to live with some friends at Nyso, seven
hours by boat from Copenhagen.

Once more he visited Rome, for a year, receiving royal attentions all
through Germany. Two years after, as he was sitting in the theatre, he
rose to let a lady pass. She saw him bending toward the floor, and
asked, "Have you dropped something?"

The great man made no answer; he was dead. The funeral was a grand
expression of love and honor. His body lay in state in the Royal Palace,
laurel about his brow, the coffin ornamented with floral crowns--one
made by the Queen of Denmark; his chisel laid in the midst of laurel and
palm, and his great works of art placed about him. Houses were draped in
black, bells tolled in all the churches, women threw flowers from their
windows before the forty artists who carried the coffin, and the King
and Prince royal received it in person at the Frue Kirke.

Then it was borne to the large museum which Copenhagen had built to
receive his work, and buried in the centre of the inner court, which had
been prepared under his own hand. A low granite coping surrounds the
grave, which is entirely covered with ivy, and on the side is his boyish
name, Bertel (Bartholomew) Thorwaldsen.




MOZART.


The quaint old city of Salzburg, Austria, built into the mountain-side,
is a Mecca for all who love music, and admire the immortal Mozart. When
he was alive, his native city allowed him nearly to starve; when he was
dead, she built him a beautiful monument, and preserved his home, a
plain two-story, stuccoed building, for thousands of travellers to look
upon sadly and tenderly.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born Jan. 27, 1756, a delicate, sensitive
child, who would ask a dozen times a day whether his friends loved him,
and, if answered in the negative, would burst into tears. At three, he
began to show his passion for music. He would listen intensely as his
father taught his little sister, Nannerl, seven years old; would move
his playthings from one room to another, to the sound of the violin; and
at four, composed pieces which astonished his sire.

[Illustration: W. A. MOZART.]

Two years later, the proud father took Wolfgang and his sister on a
concert tour to Vienna. So well did the boy play, that the Empress Maria
Theresa held him in her arms, and kissed him heartily. One day as he
was walking between two of her daughters, he slipped on the polished
floor and fell. Marie Antoinette, afterward Empress of France, raised
him up, whereupon he said, "You are very kind; I will marry you." The
father was alarmed at this seeming audacity; but the lovely Princess
playfully kissed him.

The next year he was taken to Paris, and here two sets of sonatas, the
works of a boy of seven, were brought out, dedicated to Marie
Antoinette. The children sat at the royal table, poems were written
about them, and everywhere they excited wonder and admiration; yet so
excessively modest was young Mozart, that he cried when praised too
much. In London, Bach took the boy between his knees, and alternately
they played his own great works and those of Handel at sight. Royalty
gave them "gold snuffboxes enough to set up a shop," wrote home the
father; "but in money I am poor." Wolfgang was now taken ill of
inflammatory fever; but he could not give up his music. A board was laid
across the bed, and on this he wrote out his thoughts in the notes.
Finally, with ardor dampened at their lack of pecuniary success, Leopold
Mozart took his dear ones back to quiet Salzburg.

Here the cold archbishop, discrediting the reports of the boy's genius,
shut him up alone for a week to compose an oratorio, the text furnished
by himself. Mozart, only ten years old, stood the test brilliantly. The
next year a second tour was taken to Vienna, to be present at the
marriage of the Archduchess Maria Josepha. The bride died from smallpox
shortly after their arrival: and poor Wolfgang took the disease, and was
blind for nine days. When he recovered, the musicians, moved by envy and
jealousy, would not be outdone by a boy of twelve, who was equally at
home in German or Italian opera, and determined to hiss off the stage
whatever he might compose. Sad at heart, and disappointed, again the
Mozarts went back to the old home.

Two years later, after much self-sacrifice, the father took his boy to
Italy for study. The first day in Passion Week they went to the Sistine
Chapel to hear the famous "Miserere" of Allegri, which was considered so
sacred, that the musicians were forbidden to take home any part of it,
or copy it out of the chapel, on pain of excommunication. Wolfgang, as
soon as he reached his lodgings, wrote it out from memory; which
remarkable feat for a boy of fourteen astonished all Rome. So
wonderfully did he play, that the audience at Naples declared there was
witchcraft in the ring which he wore on his left hand, and he was
obliged to remove it. At Milan, when he was nearly fifteen, he composed
the opera "Mithridate," conducting it himself, which was given twenty
nights in succession to enthusiastic audiences. After this came requests
for operas from Maria Theresa, Munich, and elsewhere. He was busy every
moment. Overworked, he was often ill; but the need for money to meet
heavy expenses made constant work a necessity. All this time he wrote
beautiful letters to his mother and sister. "Kiss mamma's hand for me a
thousand billion times," is the language of his loving heart. He could
scarcely be said to have had any childhood; but he kept his tenderness
and affection to the last of his life.

After their return to Salzburg, finding the new archbishop even less
cordial than the old--the former had allowed Wolfgang the munificent
salary of five dollars and a fourth yearly!--it was deemed wise to try
to find a new field for employment. The father, now sixty years of age,
must earn a pittance for the family by giving music-lessons, while the
mother accompanied the son to Paris. The separation was a hard one for
the devoted father, who could not say good-by to his idolized son, and
poor Nannerl wept the whole day long. Mozart, now twenty-one, and
famous, well repaid this affection by his pure character. He wrote: "I
have God always before me. Whatever is according to his will is also
according to mine; therefore I cannot fail to be happy and contented."

Stopping for a time at Mannheim, he attempted to gain the position of
tutor to the elector's children, but was disappointed. Here he fell in
love with Aloysia Weber, a pretty girl of fifteen, whose father, a
prompter at the National Theatre, earned only two hundred dollars yearly
for the support of his wife and six children. The girl had a fine
voice; and Mozart, blinded by love, asked no higher joy than to write
operas in which she might be the star. The good old father, who had
spent all his life in helping his son to win fame, was nearly
heart-broken when he learned of this foolish affection, and wrote him
tenderly but firmly: "Off with you to Paris; get the great folks on your
side; _aut Caesar, aut nihil_. From Paris, the name and fame of a man of
great talent goes through the whole world."

The young man, carrying out his childish motto, "God first, and then
papa," reluctantly started for Paris. Here he did not meet with great
success, for scores of applicants waited for every position. His loving
mother soon died, perhaps from over economy in her cold, dark lodgings;
and the young musician took his lonely way back to Salzburg, begging his
father's consent to his stopping at Mannheim to see the Webers. Finding
that Aloysia had gone upon the stage at Munich, he hastened to see her.
She had been offered a good salary. Meantime Mozart had won no new
laurels at Paris. He was small in stature, and poor; and the girl who
wept at his departure a few months previously professed now scarcely to
have seen his face before. The young lover, cut to the heart, yet proud,
seated himself at the piano, and played,

    "I leave the girl gladly who cares not for me,"

and then hastened away to Salzburg. Aloysia married a comedian, and
lived a most unhappy life, gaining some fame from singing the music
which Mozart wrote for her.

He remained at home for a year and a half, till called to Munich to
write the opera "Idomeneo," and later to Vienna. Here, unfortunately, he
met the Webers again, and, their father having died, he boarded in their
house, and gave lessons to Constance, a younger sister of Aloysia. She
was a plain, good-hearted girl, without much energy, but with a great
appreciation of her gifted teacher. The result came naturally; he fell
in love with the penniless girl, and, despite the distress of his aged
father at his choice, married her when he was twenty-six and she
eighteen.

Henceforward there was no hope of any thing save the direst poverty. To
marry without love is a grave mistake; to marry simply for love is
sometimes a mistake equally grave. He could of course do nothing now for
his aged father or sister. Unsteady employment, a rapidly-increasing
family, and a wife ill most of the time, made the struggle for existence
ten times harder than before his marriage. Once when he had prepared to
visit his father for the first time after the wedding, and had waited
months for the necessary funds, he was arrested for a debt of fifteen
dollars, just as he was stepping into the carriage.

The Emperor Joseph said to him one day, "Why did you not marry a rich
wife?" With dignity Mozart at once replied, "Sire, I trust that my
genius will always enable me to support the woman I love"; but
unfortunately it did not. He wrote after his marriage: "The moment we
were made one, my wife as well as myself began to weep, which touched
every one, even the priest, and they all cried when they witnessed how
our hearts were moved." How little they dreamed that they should weep
more seriously when hunger stared their six children in the face!

From the time of his marriage till his death, nine years, says Rev. Mr.
Haweis, "his life can be compared to nothing but a torch burning out
rapidly in the wind." It was a period of incessant, astonishing labor.
He dedicated six quartets to his dear friend Joseph Haydn, who said,
"Mozart is the greatest composer who has ever lived"; wrote "Figaro"
when he was twenty-nine, which had the greatest popularity, "Don
Giovanni" at thirty-one, and the "Flauto Magico" gratis, for the benefit
of the theatre director, who was in want. The two latter creations were
hailed with delight. Goethe wrote to Schiller later of "Don Giovanni,"
"That piece stands entirely alone; and Mozart's death has rendered all
hope of any thing like it idle."

Whenever he appeared at the theatre, he was called upon the stage from
all parts of the house; yet all this time he could not earn enough to
live. He received only a hundred dollars from his "Don Giovanni," and
less for the others. He gave lessons every hour he could spare, concerts
in the open air, borrowed from his friends, scrimped himself, to send
money to his sick wife at Baden, pawned his silver plate to make one
more unsuccessful journey to win the aid of indifferent princes, and
fainted often at his tasks after midnight. Still he wrote to "the best
and dearest wife of my heart," "If I only had a letter from you, all
would be right," and promised her to work harder than ever to earn
money.

When Constance was at home with him, if he left her in the morning
before she awakened, he would leave a note for her with the words,
"Good-morning, my darling wife. I shall be at home at -- o'clock
precisely." Once when she had been ill for eight months, and Mozart was
composing beside her as she slept, suddenly a noisy messenger entered.
Alarmed lest his wife should be disturbed, he rose hastily, when the
penknife in his hand fell, and buried itself in his foot. Without a word
escaping his lips, he left the room, a surgeon was called, and, though
lame for some time, the wife was not told of the accident.

His compositions found few purchasers, for the people generally could
not comprehend them. Publishers' shops were closed to him, unless he
would write in the popular style. "Then I can make no more by my pen,"
he said bitterly, "and I had better starve and go to destruction at
once." So poor had his family become, that, with no fuel in the house,
he and his wife were found by a friend, waltzing to keep warm.

About this time a sepulchral-looking man called to ask that a "Requiem"
be written on the death of the wife of an Austrian nobleman, who was to
be considered the author, and thus his intense grief be shown, though
manifested through a lie. Mozart consulted with his wife, as was his
custom, and, as she indorsed it, he accepted the commission for fifty
dollars. Overworked, harassed by debts which he could not pay, hurt at
the jealousies and intrigues of several musicians, disappointed at the
reception of his new opera at Prague, his hopeful nature forsook him,
and he told Constance that the "Requiem" would be written for himself.

In the midst of this wretchedness their sixth child was born. The poor
wife forgot her own sorrows, and prevailed upon him to give up work for
a time; but the active brain could not rest, and he wrote as he lay on
his sick-bed. On the day before he died, Dec. 4, 1791, at two o'clock,
he persisted in having a portion of the "Requiem" sung by the friends
who stood about his bed, and, joining with them in the alto, burst into
tears, saying, "Did I not say that I was writing the 'Requiem' for
myself?" Soon after he said, "Constance, oh that I could only hear my
'Flauto Magico!'" and a friend playing it, he was cheered.

A messenger now arrived to tell him that he was appointed organist at
St. Stephen's Cathedral, a position for which he had longed for years;
but it came too late. Death was unwelcome to him. "Now must I go," he
said, "just as I should be able to live in peace; I must leave my
family, my poor children, at the very instant in which I should have
been able to provide for their welfare." Cold applications were ordered
by the physicians for his burning head; he became delirious for two
hours, and died at midnight, only thirty-five years old. Constance was
utterly prostrated, and threw herself upon his bed, hoping to die also.

Mozart's body was laid beside his piano, and then, in a pouring rain,
buried in a "common grave," in the plainest manner possible, with nobody
present except the keepers of the cemetery. Weeks after, when the wife
visited the spot, she found a new grave-digger, who could not tell where
her beloved husband was buried, and to this day the author of fourteen
Italian operas, seventeen symphonies, and dozens of cantatas and
serenades, about eight hundred compositions in all, sleeps in an unknown
grave. The Emperor Leopold aided her in a concert to raise fifteen
hundred dollars to pay her husband's debts, and provide a little for
herself. Eighteen years afterward she married the Danish councillor,
Baron von Missen, who educated her two sons, four other children having
died. Salzburg waited a half-century before she erected a bronze statue
to her world-renowned genius, in the Square of St. Michael; and, seventy
years after his death, Vienna built him a monument in the Cemetery of
St. Mark. History scarcely furnishes a more pathetic life. He filled the
world with music, yet died in want and sorrow.




[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON.]

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.


In a quaint old house in Lichfield, England, now used as a draper's
shop, Samuel Johnson, son of a poor bookseller and bookbinder, was born.
Here, as in Westminster Abbey, a statue is erected to his memory. Near
by is the schoolhouse where Addison and Garrick studied.

When Samuel was two and a half years old, diseased with scrofula, his
good mother, with ten dollars sewed in her skirt so that nobody could
steal it, took him to London that, with two hundred others, he might be
touched by Queen Anne, and thus, as superstitious people believed, be
healed. On this journey she bought him a silver cup and spoon. The
latter he kept till his dying-day, and parted with the cup only in the
dire poverty of later years.

The touch of the Queen did no good, for he became blind in one eye; with
the other he could not see a friend half a yard off, and his face was
sadly disfigured. Being prevented thus from sharing the sports of other
boys, much time was spent in reading. He was first taught at a little
school kept by Widow Oliver, who years after, when he was starting for
Oxford, brought him a present of gingerbread, telling him he was the
best scholar she ever had. After a time he studied Latin under a master
who "whipped it into him." The foolish teacher would ask the boy the
Latin word for candlestick, or some unexpected thing, and then whip him,
saying, "This I do to save you from the gallows!"

Naturally indolent, Samuel had to struggle against this tendency. He
had, however, the greatest ambition to excel, and to this he attributed
his later success. He was also inquisitive, and had a wonderful memory.
When he wore short dresses, his mother gave him the Prayer-Book one day,
and, pointing to the Collect, said, "You must get this by heart." She
went up stairs, but no sooner had she reached the second floor than she
heard him following. He could repeat it perfectly, having looked it over
but twice. He left school at sixteen, spending two years at home in
helping his parents, and studying earnestly. One day, his father, being
ill, asked him to go to a neighboring town and take his place in selling
books at a stall on market-day. He was proud, and did not go. Fifty
years afterward, in his greatness, then an old man, he went to this
stall, and, with uncovered head, remained for an hour in the rain where
his father had formerly stood, exposed to the sneers of the bystanders
and the inclemency of the weather. It showed the repentance of a noble
soul for disobedience to a parent.

At nineteen, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, where he acted as
servant. He used to go daily to his friend Taylor, and get lectures
second-hand, till his feet, showing through his worn-out shoes, were
perceived by the students, and he ceased going. A rich young man
secretly put a pair of new shoes at his door, which he indignantly threw
out of the window. He was willing to work and earn, but would not
receive charity. At the end of three years he became so poor that he was
obliged to leave college, his father dying soon after.

After various experiences, he sought the position of usher at a school,
but was refused because it was thought that the boys would make fun of
his ugliness. He finally obtained such a place, was treated with great
harshness, and left in a few months. Strange to say, the poor, lonely
scholar, only twenty-six, now fell in love with a widow forty-eight
years old. After obtaining his mother's consent, he married her, and the
union proved a most happy one. With the little money his wife possessed,
he started a school, and advertised for pupils; but only three came, and
the school soon closed. In despair he determined to try London, and see
if an author could there earn his bread. In that great city he lived for
some time on nine cents a day. One publisher to whom he applied
suggested to him that the wisest course would be to become a porter and
carry trunks.

A poem written at this time, entitled "London," for which he received
fifty dollars, one line of which was in capital letters,

    "SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY DEPRESSED,"

attracted attention; and Pope, who was then at the height of his fame,
asked Dublin University to give to the able scholar the degree of M.A.,
that he might thus be able to take the principalship of a school, and
earn three hundred dollars a year; but this was refused. Out of such
struggles come heroic souls.

When he was forty, he published the "Vanity of Human Wishes," receiving
seventy-five dollars, asserted by many to be the most impressive thing
of its kind in the language. The lines,

    "There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
    Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,"

show his struggles. A drama soon after, played by the great actor, David
Garrick, brought him nearly a thousand dollars; but the play itself was
a failure. When asked by his friends how he felt about his ill success,
he replied, "Like the monument," meaning that he continued firm and
unmoved, like a column of granite. Fame was coming at last, after he had
struggled in London for thirteen years--and what bitterness they had
brought!

For two years he worked almost constantly on a paper called the
"Rambler." When his wife said that, well as she had thought of him
before, she had never considered him equal to this, he was more pleased
than with any praise he ever received. She died three days after the
last copy was published, and Johnson was utterly prostrated. He buried
himself in hard work in his garret, a most inconvenient room; but he
said, "In that room I never saw Mrs. Johnson." Her wedding-ring was
placed in a little box, and tenderly kept till his death.

Three years afterward, his great work, his Dictionary, appeared, for
which he received eight thousand dollars; but, as he had been obliged to
employ six assistants for seven years, he was still poor, but now
famous. The Universities of Oxford and Dublin, when he no longer needed
their assistance, hastened to bestow their degrees upon him. Even George
III. invited him to the royal palace,--a strange contrast to a few years
before, when Samuel Johnson was under arrest for a debt of thirty
dollars! When asked by Reynolds how he had obtained his accuracy and
flow of language in conversation, he replied, "By trying to do my best
on every occasion and in every company." About this time his aged mother
died, and in the evenings of one week, to defray her funeral expenses,
he wrote "Rasselas," and received five hundred dollars for it. He wrote
in his last letter to her, "You have been the best mother, and I believe
the best woman, in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and
beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have
omitted to do well." His last great work was "The Lives of the Poets."

He received now a pension of fifteen hundred dollars a year, for his
valuable services to literature, but never used more than four hundred
dollars for himself. He took care of a blind woman of whom he said, "She
was a friend to my poor wife, and was in the house when she died, she
has remained in it ever since," of a mother and daughter dependent upon
an old family physician, and of two men whom nobody else would care for.
Once when he found a poor woman on the street late at night, he took her
home, and kept her till she was restored to health. His pockets were
always filled with pennies for street Arabs; and, if he found poor
children asleep on a threshold, he would slip money into their hands
that, when they awakened, they might buy a breakfast. When a servant was
dying who had been in the family for forty-three years, he prayed with
her and kissed her, the tears falling down his cheeks. He wrote in his
diary, "We kissed and parted--I humbly hope to meet again, and part no
more." He held, rightly, that Christianity levels all distinctions of
rank.

He was very tender to animals. Once, when in Wales, a gardener brought
into the house a hare which had been caught in the potatoes, and was
told to give it to the cook. Dr. Johnson asked to have it placed in his
arms; then, taking it to the window, he let it go, shouting to it to
run as fast as possible. He would buy oysters for his cat, Hodge, that
the servants, from seeing his fondness for it, might be led to treat it
kindly.

He died at the age of seventy-five, such men as Burke and Reynolds
standing by his bedside. Of the latter, he begged that he would "read
his Bible, and never paint on Sundays." His last words were to a young
lady who had asked his blessing: "God bless you, my dear!" He was buried
with appropriate honors in Westminster Abbey, and monuments are erected
to him in St. Paul's Cathedral, and at Lichfield. The poor boy, nearly
blind, became "the brightest ornament of the eighteenth century."




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.


On a low slab in a quiet spot, just north of the Church of Knight
Templars, in London, are the simple words, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith."
The author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" needs no grander monument; for he
lives in the hearts of the people.

Oliver Goldsmith was born in Pallas, Ireland, in 1728, the son of a poor
minister, who, by means of tilling some fields and assisting in a parish
outside his own, earned two hundred dollars a year for his wife and
seven children! When about six years old, Oliver nearly died of
smallpox, and his pitted face made him an object of jest among the boys.
At eight he showed great fondness for books, and began to write verses.
His mother pleaded for a college education for him, but there seemed
little prospect of it. One day, when a few were dancing at his uncle's
house, the little boy sprang upon the floor and began to dance. The
fiddler, to make fun of his short figure and homely face, exclaimed,
"AEsop!" The boy, stung to the quick, replied:--

    "Heralds, proclaim aloud! all saying,
    'See AEsop dancing and his monkey playing;'"

when, of course, the fiddler became much chagrined.

[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH.]

All his school life Oliver was painfully diffident, but a good scholar.
His father finally earned a better salary, and the way seemed open for
college, when, lo! his sister, who had the opportunity of marrying a
rich man, was obliged--so thought the public opinion of the day--to have
a marriage portion of $2,000, and poor Oliver's educational hopes were
blasted. He must now enter Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar
(servant), wear a coarse black gown without sleeves, a red cap,--the
badge of servitude,--sweep the courts, carry dishes, and be treated with
contempt, which nearly crushed his sensitive nature.

A year and a half later his father died, and his scanty means ceased
from that source. To keep from starving he wrote ballads, selling them
to street musicians at $1.25 apiece, and stole out at night to hear them
sung. Often he shared this pittance with some one more wretched than
himself. One cold night he gave his blankets to a person with five
children, and crawled into the ticking of his bed for warmth. When a
kind friend, who often brought him food, came in the morning, he was
obliged to break in the door, as Goldsmith could not extricate himself
from his bed.

Obtaining a small scholarship, he gave a little party in his room in
honor of the event. A savage tutor appeared in the midst of the
festivities, and knocked him down. So incensed was Goldsmith that he ran
away from college, and with twenty-five cents in his pocket started for
Cork. For three days he lived on eight cents a day, and, by degrees,
parted with nearly all his clothes for food.

Though wholly unfitted for the ministry, Goldsmith was urged by his
relatives to enter the church, because he would then have a living. Too
young to be accepted, he remained at home for two years, assisting his
brother Henry in the village school; and then offering himself as a
candidate, was refused, it was said, because he appeared before the
right reverend in scarlet trousers! After being tutor for a year, his
uncle gave him $250, that he might go to Dublin and study law. On
arriving, he met an old friend, lost all his money in playing cards with
him, and, ashamed and penniless, returned and begged the forgiveness of
his relative.

A little more money was given him, and with this he studied medicine in
Edinburgh for over a year, earning later some money by teaching.
Afterward he travelled in Italy and France, begging his way by singing
or playing on his flute at the doors of the peasants, returning to
England at twenty-eight years of age without a cent in his pocket.
Living among the beggars in Axe Lane, he asked to spread plasters, or
pound in the mortars of the apothecaries, till, finally, a chemist hired
him out of pity. Through the aid of a fellow-student, he finally opened
a doctor's office, but few came to a stranger, and these usually so
poor as to be unable to pay.

Attending one day upon a workman, he held his hat close to his breast,
so as to cover a big patch in his second-hand clothes, while he felt the
patient's pulse. Half guessing the young doctor's poverty, the sick man
told him about his master, the author of the famous old novel, "Clarissa
Harlowe," and how he had befriended writers. Goldsmith at once applied
for work, and became press corrector in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street.

Later he was employed as a reviewer on a magazine. Being obliged to
submit all his reviews to an illiterate bookseller and his wife, the
engagement soon came to an end. He lived now in a garret, was dunned
even for his milk-bill, wrote a book for a college friend, under whose
name it was published, and began a work of his own, "Polite Learning in
Europe," writing to a wealthy relative for aid to publish, which letter
was never answered, though it was greatly regretted after Goldsmith
became famous.

With no hope in London, he was promised a position in the East Indies.
Life began to look bright, though his Fleet Street garret, with one
chair, was surrounded by swarms of children and dirt. The promise was
not kept, and he applied for the position of hospital mate. His clothes
being too poor for him to be seen on the streets, he pledged the money
to be received for four articles, bought a new suit, went up to the
court of examiners, and was rejected! Had any of these positions been
obtained, the world, doubtless, would never have known the genius of
Oliver Goldsmith.

He went back to his garret to write, pawned his clothes to pay the
landlady, who was herself to be turned out of the wretched lodgings,
sold his "Life of Voltaire" for twenty dollars, and published his
"Polite Learning in Europe," anonymously. The critics attacked it, and
Goldsmith's day of fame had dawned at last. "The Citizen of the World,"
a good-natured satire on society, next appeared, and was a success. Dr.
Johnson became his friend, and made him a member of his club with
Reynolds, Burke, and other noted men. The "Traveller" was next
published, with an immense sale. Goldsmith now moved into the buildings
which bear his name, near Temple Church, and, for once, had flowers and
green grass to look out upon.

He was still poor, doubtless spending what money he received with little
wisdom. His landlady arrested him for room-rent, upon hearing which, Dr.
Johnson came at once to see him, gave him money, took from his desk the
manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it to a publisher for
three hundred dollars. This was the fruit of much labor, and the world
received it cordially. Some of his essays were now reprinted sixteen
times. What a change from the Fleet Street garret!

The "Deserted Village" was published five years later, Goldsmith having
spent two whole years in reviewing it after it was written, so careful
was he that every word should be the best that could be chosen. This was
translated at once into German by Goethe, who was also a great admirer
of the "Vicar of Wakefield." He also wrote an English History, a Roman,
a Grecian, several dramas, of which "She Stoops to Conquer" was the most
popular, and eight volumes of the "History of the Earth and Animated
Nature," for which he received five hundred dollars a volume, leaving
this unfinished.

Still in debt, overworked, laboring sometimes far into the morning
hours, not leaving his desk for weeks together, even for exercise,
Goldsmith died at forty-five, broken with the struggle of life, but with
undying fame. When he was buried, one April day, 1774, Brick Court and
the stairs of the building were filled with the poor and the forsaken
whom he had befriended. His monument is in the Poets' Corner at
Westminster Abbey, the greatest honor England could offer. True, she let
him nearly starve, but she crowned him at the last. He conquered the
world by hard work, kindness, and a gentleness as beautiful as his
genius was great.




MICHAEL FARADAY.


In the heart of busy London, over a stable, lived James and Margaret
Faraday, with their four little children. The father was a blacksmith,
in feeble health, unable to work for a whole day at a time, a kind, good
man to his household; the mother, like himself, was uneducated, but neat
and industrious, and devoted to her family. The children learned the
rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic at school, and then, of
course, were obliged to earn their living.

Michael, the third child, born 1791, became, at thirteen years of age,
an errand-boy in a bookseller's shop. His first duty was to carry
newspapers in the morning to customers, who read them for an hour or two
for a trifle, a penny probably, and then gave them to the newsboy to be
re-loaned. Often on Sunday morning the patrons would say, "You must call
again," forgetting that the next place might be a mile away, and that
the young boy was quite as desirous as they, to go to church with his
parents. Years after this, when he had become famous the world over, he
said, "I always feel a tenderness for those boys, because I once
carried newspapers myself."

[Illustration: MICHAEL FARADAY.]

The following year, 1805, he was apprenticed to a bookseller for seven
years, to learn the trade of binding and selling books. Here was hard
work before him till he was twenty-one; not a cheerful prospect for one
who loved play as well as other boys. Whenever he had a spare moment, he
was looking inside the books he was binding. Mrs. Marcet's
"Conversations in Chemistry" delighted him; and when he was given the
"Encyclopedia Britannica" to bind, the article on Electricity seemed a
treasure-house of wonders. He soon made an electrical machine,--not an
expensive one,--simply a glass vial, and other apparatus of a similar
kind; and afterwards with a real cylinder. These cost only a few pence a
week, but they gave a vast amount of pleasure to the blacksmith's son.

One day he saw in a shop-window a notice that a Mr. Tatum was to give at
his own house some lectures on Natural Philosophy. The charge for each
was twenty-five cents. No bookseller's apprentice would have such an
amount of money to spend weekly as that. However, his brother Robert,
three years older, himself a blacksmith, with some pride, perhaps, that
Michael was interested in such weighty matters, furnished the money, and
a lodger at the home of the bookseller taught him drawing, so that he
might be able, in taking notes, to illustrate the experiments. He
attended the lectures, wrote them out carefully in a clear hand, bound
them in four volumes, and dedicated them to his employer.

A customer at the shop had become interested in a boy who cared so much
for science, and took him to hear four lectures given by Sir Humphry
Davy at the Royal Institution. This was an unexpected pleasure. He was
beginning to sigh for something beyond book-binding. "Oh, if I could
only help in some scientific work, no matter how humble!" he thought to
himself. He says in his journal, "In my ignorance of the world, and
simplicity of my mind, I wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the
Royal Society." No answer was ever returned to the request for a
situation. Could the president have realized that some day ten thousand
people would know the name of Michael Faraday where one knew the name of
Sir Joseph Banks, probably he would have answered the boy's letter.
Blessings on the great man or woman who takes time, however briefly, to
answer every letter received! Such a man was Garfield, and such is
Whittier. A civil question demands a civil answer, whether the person
addressed be king or peasant.

About the time his apprenticeship ended, in 1812, he summoned courage to
write directly to the great Sir Humphry Davy, sending the full notes he
had made at that gentleman's lectures. Sir Humphry, possibly remembering
that he, too, had been a poor boy, the son of a widowed milliner, wrote
a polite note, saying, that "Science was a harsh mistress, and, in a
pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted
themselves to her service;" that he was going out of town, but would see
if he could some time aid him.

Meantime Michael was making crude galvanic experiments. He bought some
malleable zinc, cut out seven plates, each the size of a half-penny,
covered these with the copper half-pennies, placing between them six
pieces of paper soaked in a solution of muriate of soda, and with this
simple battery, decomposed sulphate of magnesia. So pleased was he that
he wrote a letter to one of his boy friends, telling of the experiment,
and adding, "Time is all I require. Oh, that I could purchase at a cheap
rate some of our modern gent's spare hours, nay, days! I think it would
be a good bargain, both for them and for me." The youth had learned the
first secret of success,--not to waste time; not to throw it away on
useless persons or useless subjects.

He had learned another secret, that of choosing right companions. To
this same young friend, Abbott, he wrote, "A companion cannot be a good
one, unless he is morally so. I have met a good companion in the lowest
path of life, and I have found such as I despised in a rank far superior
to mine.... I keep regular hours, and enter not intentionally into
pleasures productive of evil." London's highest circles possessed no
purer spirit than this young mechanic.

Faraday now began work at his trade of book-binding for a Frenchman in
London, who, having no children, promised him the business, if he would
remain with him always; but the employer's temper was so hasty that the
position became almost unbearable. The young man was growing depressed
in spirits, when one night, just as he was preparing for bed, a loud
knock on the door startled him. On looking out of the window, he espied
a grand carriage, with a footman in livery, who left a note. This was a
request from Sir Humphry Davy to see him in the morning. Was there,
then, the possibility of a place in the Royal Institution? Between
conflicting hopes and fears, he went to sleep, and in the morning
hastened to see the great chemist. The result was an engagement at six
dollars a week, with two rooms at the top of the house! He was to clean
the instruments, move them to and from the lecture-room, and in all ways
to make himself useful. Now he could say good-by to book-binding; and,
though six dollars a week was not a munificent sum, yet he could
actually handle beautiful instruments,--not copper half-pence and bits
of zinc,--and could listen to stimulating lectures.

And now work began in earnest. He joined the City Philosophical Society,
an association of thirty or forty persons in moderate circumstances, who
met each Wednesday evening, one of their number giving a lecture. Then a
half dozen friends came together once a week to read, criticise, and
correct each other in pronunciation and conversation. How eagerly would
such a young man have attended college! There was no opportunity to hear
polished talk in elegant drawing-rooms, no chance to improve manners in
so-called "best society." He did what is in the power of everybody,--he
educated himself. Did he not need recreation after the hard day's work?
Every person has to make his choice. Amusements do not make scholars:
pleasure and knowledge do not go hand in hand. Faraday chose the topmost
story of the Royal Institution, and books for companions, and immortal
fame was the result.

The experiments with Davy soon became absorbing, and often dangerous.
Now they extracted sugar from beet-root; now they treated chloride of
nitrogen, wearing masks of glass upon their faces, which,
notwithstanding, were sometimes badly cut by the explosions. Seven
months after this, Sir Humphry decided to travel upon the Continent, and
asked Faraday to be his amanuensis. This was a rare opportunity for the
young assistant. For a year and a half they visited France, Switzerland,
Italy, and Germany, climbing Vesuvius, enjoying art-galleries, and
meeting the learned and famous of the age. The journey had its
disagreeable side; for Faraday was made more or less a servant by Davy
and his sometimes inconsiderate wife; but it had great and lasting
advantages for one who had never been but twelve miles from London.

His heart turned longingly back to the poor ones he had left behind. He
wrote to his mother, "The first and last thing in my mind is England,
home, and friends. When sick, when cold, when tired, the thoughts of
those at home are a warm and refreshing balm to my heart.... These are
the first and greatest sweetness in the life of man.... I am almost
contented except with my ignorance, which becomes more visible to me
every day." And again, "I have several times been more than half decided
to return hastily home: I am only restrained by the wish of
improvement." To his sister he wrote, "Give my love with a kiss to
mother, the first thing you do on reading this letter, and tell her how
much I think of her." To Abbott he wrote something intended for his eyes
only, but headed, "I do not wish that my mother should remain ignorant
of it. I _have no secrets from her_." His heart bounded with joy at the
prospect of meeting them again, and "enjoying the pleasure of their
conversation, from which he had been excluded." No absorption in science
could make him outgrow his parents and his humble home.

On his return to England his salary was increased to $500 yearly, and he
was promoted to Laboratory Assistant. He was now twenty-four. He had
noted carefully Davy's researches in iodine and chlorine, had seen him
develop his safety-lamp, which has proved an untold blessing to miners,
had made many experiments from his own thinking; and now he too was to
give his first course of six lectures before his friends in the City
Philosophical Society, on Chemical Affinity, and kindred topics. He
wrote them out with great care; for whatever he did was well done. This
year he published his first paper in the "Quarterly Journal of Science"
on caustic lime. Encouraged by the approving words of Sir Humphry, the
following year he wrote six papers for the "Quarterly," giving his
experiments with gases and minerals, and gave another course of lectures
before the Philosophical Society. To improve himself in delivering
these, he attended lectures on oratory, taking copious notes.

Seven years had now gone by in his apprenticeship to Science. He had
published thirty-seven papers in the "Quarterly," had a book ready for
the press, on the alloys of steel, and had read a paper before the Royal
Society itself, on two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and a new
compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen. But the young and now
brilliant student had other weighty matters in hand. Five years before
this, he had written in his diary:

    "What is't that comes in false, deceitful guise,
    Making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise?
                                          'Tis love.
    What's that the wise man always strives to shun,
    Though still it ever o'er the world has run?
                                          'Tis love."

But now, whether he tried to shun it or no, he became thoroughly in love
with Sarah Barnard, an intelligent and sweet-tempered girl, the
daughter of a silversmith. Distracted by fears lest he might not win
her, he wrote her. "In whatever way I can best minister to your
happiness, either by assiduity or by absence, it shall be done. Do not
injure me by withdrawing your friendship, or punish me for aiming to be
more than a friend by making me less."

The girl showed this to her father, who replied that love made
philosophers say very foolish things. She hesitated about accepting him,
and went away to the seaside to consider it; but the ardent lover
followed, determined to learn the worst if need be. They walked on the
cliffs overhanging the ocean, and Faraday wrote in his journal as the
day drew near its close, "My thoughts saddened and fell, from the fear I
should never enjoy such happiness again. I could not master my feelings,
or prevent them from sinking, and I actually at last shamed myself by
moist eyes." He blamed himself because he did not know "the best means
to secure the heart he wished to gain." He knew how to fathom the depths
of chemical combinations, but he could not fathom the depths of Sarah
Barnard's heart.

At last the hour of her decision came; and both were made supremely
happy by it. A week later he wrote her, "Every moment offers me fresh
proof of the power you have over me. I could not at one time have
thought it possible that I, that any man, could have been under the
dominion of feelings so undivided and so intense: now I think that no
other man can have felt or feel as I do." A year later they were married
very quietly, he desiring their wedding day to be "just like any other
day." Twenty-eight years later he wrote among the important dates and
discoveries of his life, "June 12, 1821, he married,--an event which,
more than any other, contributed to his earthly happiness and healthful
state of mind. The union has nowise changed, except in the depth and
strength of its character."

For forty-seven years "his dear Sarah" made life a joy to him. He rarely
left home; but if so, as at the great gathering of British Scientists at
Birmingham, he wrote back, "After all, there is no pleasure like the
tranquil pleasure of home; and here, even here, the moment I leave the
table, I wish I were with you IN QUIET. Oh, what happiness is ours! My
runs into the world in this way only serve to make me esteem that
happiness the more."

And now came twenty years in science that made Faraday the wonder and
ornament of his age. Elected an F.R.S., he began at once twelve lectures
in Chemical Manipulation before the London Institution, six on Chemical
Philosophy before the Royal Society, published six papers on
electromagnetism, and began a course of juvenile lectures which
continued for nineteen years. This was one of the beautiful things of
Faraday's life,--a great man living in a whirl of work, yet taking time
to make science plain to the young. When asked at what age he would
teach science, he replied that he had never found a child too young to
understand him. For twenty years he lectured at the Royal Academy at
Woolwich, became scientific adviser to the government with regard to
lighthouses and buoys, not for gain, but for the public good, drew all
London to his eloquent lectures with his brilliant experiments, Prince
Albert attending with his sons; and published one hundred and
fifty-eight scientific essays and thirty series of "Experimental
Researches in Electricity," which latter, says Dr. Gladstone, "form one
of the most marvellous monuments of intellectual work; one of the rarest
treasure-houses of newly-discovered knowledge, with which the world has
ever been enriched."

He not only gathered into his vast brain what other men had learned of
science, but he tested every step to prove the facts, and became, says
Professor Tyndall, "the greatest experimental philosopher the world has
ever seen." He loved science as he loved his family and his God, and
played with Nature as with a petted child. When he lectured, "there was
a gleaming in his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet
could describe. His audience took fire with him, and every face was
flushed."

In his earlier discoveries in compressing gases into liquids, he
obtained from one thousand cubic feet of coal gas one gallon of fluid
from which he distilled benzine. In 1845 the chemist Hofman found this
same substance in coal-tar, from which come our beautiful aniline dyes.

After eighteen years of studying the wonderful results of Galvani's
discovery at the University of Bologna, that the legs of a dead frog
contract under the electric current; and of Volta, in 1799, with his
voltaic pile of copper, zinc, and leather, in salt-water; and of
Christian Oersted at the University of Copenhagen; and Ampere and Arago,
that electricity will produce magnets, Faraday made the great discovery
of magneto-electricity,--that magnets will produce electricity. At once
magneto-electric machines were made for generating electricity for the
electric light, electro-plating, etc. This discovery, says Professor
Tyndall, "is the greatest experimental result ever attained by an
investigator, the Mont Blanc of Faraday's achievements."

Soon after he made another great discovery, that of electric induction,
or that one electric current will induce another current in an adjoining
wire. Others had suspected this, but had sought in vain to prove it. The
Bell telephone, which Sir William Thompson calls "the wonder of
wonders," depends upon this principle. Here no battery is required; for
the vibration of a thin iron plate is made to generate the currents.
After this, Faraday proved that the various kinds of electricity are
identical; and that the electricity of the Voltaic pile is produced by
chemical action, and not by contact of metals, as Volta had supposed.
The world meantime had showered honors upon the great scientist. Great
Britain had made him her idol. The Cambridge Philosophical Society, the
Institution of Civil Engineers, of British Architects, of Philosophy and
of Medicine, and the leading associations of Scotland had made him an
honorary member. Paris had elected him corresponding member of all her
great societies. St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, Palermo,
Modena, Lisbon, Heidelberg, Frankfort, and our own Boston and
Philadelphia had sent tokens of admiration. Eminent men from all the
world came to see him.

How proud his mother must have felt at this wonderful success! She was
not able to enter into her son's pursuits from lack of early education;
but she talked much about him, calling him ever, "my Michael"; and would
do nothing whatever without his advice. He supported her in her
declining years; and she seemed perfectly happy. His father had died in
his boyhood; but Faraday ever honored his occupation. He used to say, "I
love a smith-shop, and anything relating to smithing. My father was a
blacksmith."

He was now forty-nine. The overtaxed brain refused to work longer.
Memory was losing her grasp, and but for the sweet and careful presence
of Sarah Faraday, the life-work would doubtless have been finished at
this time. She took him to Switzerland, where he walked beside the lakes
and over the mountains with "my companion, dear wife, and partner in
all things." For four years he made scarcely any experiments in original
research, and then the tired brain seemed to regain its wonted power,
and go on to other discoveries.

An Italian philosopher, Morichini, was the first to announce the
magnetizing power of the solar rays. Mrs. Somerville covered one-half of
a sewing-needle with paper, and exposed the other half to the violet
rays. In two hours the exposed end had acquired magnetism. Faraday, by
long and difficult experiments, showed the converse of this: he
magnetized a ray of light,--an experiment "high, beautiful, and alone,"
says Mr. Tyndall. He also showed the magnetic condition of all matter.

He was always at work. He entered the laboratory in the morning, and
often worked till eleven at night, hardly stopping for his meals. He
seldom went into society, for time was too precious. If he needed a
change, he read aloud Shakspeare, Byron, or Macaulay to his wife in the
evening, or corresponded with Herschel, Humboldt, and other great men.
In the midst of exhausting labors he often preached on the Sabbath,
believing more earnestly in the word of God the more he studied science.

When he was sixty-four the great brain began to show signs of decline.
Belgium, Munich, Vienna, Madrid, Rome, Naples, Turin, Rotterdam, Upsala,
Lombardy, and Moscow had sent him medals, or made him a member of their
famous societies. Napoleon III. made him commander of the Legion of
Honor, a rare title; and the French exhibition awarded him the grand
medal of honor. The Queen asked him to dine with her at Windsor Castle,
and, at the request of Prince Albert her husband, she presented him with
a lovely home at Hampton Court.

At seventy-one he wrote to Mrs. Faraday from Glasgow, "My head is full,
and my heart also; but my recollection rapidly fails. You will have to
resume your old function of being a pillow to my mind, and a rest,--a
happy-making wife." Still he continued to make able reports to the
government on lighthouses, electric machines, steam-engines, and the
like.

And then for two years the memory grew weaker, the body feebler, and he
was, as he told a friend, "just waiting." He died in his chair in his
study, August 25th, 1867, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Westminster Abbey would have opened her doors to him, but he requested
to be buried "in the simplest earthly place, with a gravestone of the
most ordinary kind." On a plain marble slab in the midst of clustering
ivy are his name and the dates of his birth and death. One feels a
strange tenderness of heart as he stands beside this sacred spot where
rests one, who, though elected to seventy societies, and offered nearly
one hundred titles and tokens of honor, said he "would remain plain
Michael Faraday to the last."

Wonderful man! great in mind, noble in heart, and gentle in manner,
having brought a strong nature under the most complete discipline. His
energy, his devotion to a single object, his untiring work, and his
beautiful character carried the blacksmith's son to the highest
success.




SIR HENRY BESSEMER.


A little way from London, England, at Denmark Hill, looking toward the
Crystal Palace, is a mansion which is fit for royalty. The grounds,
covering from thirty to forty acres, are beautifully terraced, dotted
here and there with lakelets, fountains, and artificial caverns, while
the great clumps of red rhododendron, yellow laburnum, pink hawthorne,
and white laurel make an exquisitely colored picture. The home itself is
spacious and inviting, with its elegant conservatory and rare works of
art. The owner of this house, Sir Henry Bessemer, is cordial and
gracious; and from his genial face and manner, no one would imagine that
his life had been one long struggle with obstacles.

Born in Charlton, a little county town in Hertfordshire, Jan. 19, 1813,
he received the rudiments of an education like other boys in the
neighborhood. His father, Anthony Bessemer, an inventor, seeing that his
son was inclined to mechanics, bought him, in London, a five-inch
foot-lathe, and a book which described the art of turning. Day after
day, in the quiet of his country home, he studied and practised turning,
and modelling in clay.

[Illustration: SIR HENRY BESSEMER.]

At eighteen years of age he went to London, "knowing no one," he says,
"and myself unknown,--a mere cipher in a vast sea of human enterprise."
He soon found a place to work as modeller and designer, engraving a
large number of original designs on steel, with a diamond point, for
patent-medicine labels. A year later he exhibited one of his models at
the Royal Academy. His inventive brain and observing eye were always
alert in some new direction. Having ascertained that the Government lost
thousands of pounds annually by the transfer of adhesive stamps from old
deeds to new ones, he determined to devise a stamp which could not be
used twice.

For several months he worked earnestly, at night after his daily tasks
were over, and in secret, thinking how richly the Government would
reward him if he succeeded. At last he produced a die of unique design,
which perforated a parchment deed with four hundred little holes. He
hastened to the Stamp officials to show his work. They were greatly
pleased, and asked him which he preferred for his reward, a sum of
money, or the position of Superintendent of Stamps, with a salary of
three or four thousand dollars a year. He delightedly chose the latter,
as that would make him comfortable for life. There was another reason
for his delight; for being engaged to be married, he would have no
solicitude now about daily needs: life would flow on as smoothly as a
river.

At once he visited the young lady, and told her of his great success.
She listened eagerly, and then said, "Yes, I understand this; but
surely, if all stamps had a _date_ put upon them, they could not at a
future time be used without detection." His spirits fell. He confessed
afterward that, "while he felt pleased and proud of the clever and
simple suggestion of the young lady, he saw also that all his more
elaborate system, the result of months of toil, was shattered to pieces
by it." What need for four hundred holes in a die, when a single date
was more effective? He soon worked out a die with movable dates, and
with frankness and honor presented it before the Government officials.
They saw its preferableness: the new plan was adopted by Act of
Parliament; the old stamps were called in and new ones issued; and then
the young inventor was informed that his services as Superintendent of
Stamps, at three thousand dollars a year, were not needed.

But surely the Government, which was to save a half million dollars a
year, would repay him for his months of labor and thought! Associations,
like individuals, are very apt to forget favors, when once the desired
end is attained. The Premier had resigned; and, after various promises
and excuses, a lawyer in the Stamp Office informed him that he made the
new stamp of his own free will, and there was no money to be given him.
"Sad and dispirited, and with a burning sense of injustice overpowering
all other feelings," says young Bessemer, "I went my way from the Stamp
Office, too proud to ask as a favor that which was indubitably my
right."

Alas! that he must learn thus early the selfishness of the world! But he
took courage; for, had he not made one real invention? and it must be in
his power to make others. When he was twenty-five he produced a
type-casting machine; but so opposed was it by the compositors, that it
was finally abandoned. He also invented a machine for making figured
Utrecht velvet; and some of his productions were used in the state
apartments of Windsor Castle.

A little later his attention was accidentally called to bronze powder,
he having bought a small portion to ornament his sister's album. The
powder, made in Germany, cost only twenty-two cents a pound in the raw
material, and sold for twenty-two dollars. Here was a wonderful profit.
Why could he not discover the process of making it? He worked for
eighteen months, trying all sorts of experiments, and failed. But
failure to a great mind never really means failure; so, after six
months, he tried again, and--succeeded. He knew little about patents,
had been recently defrauded by the Government; and he determined that
this discovery should be kept a secret. He made a small apparatus, and
worked it himself, sending out a travelling-man with the product. That
which cost him less than one dollar was sold for eighteen. A fortune
seemed now really within his grasp.

A friend, assured of his success, put fifty thousand dollars into the
business. Immediately Bessemer made plans of all the machinery required,
sent various parts to as many different establishments, lest his secret
be found out, and then put the pieces of his self-acting machines
together. Five assistants were engaged at high wages, under pledge of
secrecy. At first he made one thousand per cent profit; and now, in
these later years, the profit is three hundred per cent. Three of the
assistants have died; and Mr. Bessemer has turned over the business and
the factory to the other two. The secret of making the bronze powder has
never been told. Even Mr. Bessemer's oldest son had reached manhood
before he ever entered the locked room where it was made.

For ten years the inventor now turned his attention to the construction
of railway carriages, centrifugal pumps, etc. His busy brain could not
rest. When frequent explosions in coal-mines occasioned discussion
throughout the country, he made, at large expense, a working model for
ventilating mines, and offered to explain it to a committee of the House
of Commons. His offer was declined with thanks. A little investigation
on the part of great statesmen would have been scarcely out of place.

At the great exhibition in London in 1851, he exhibited several
machines,--one for grinding and polishing plate glass, and another for
draining, in an hour, an acre of land covered with water a foot deep.
The crowd looked at them, called the inventor "the ingenious Mr.
Bessemer," and passed on. Two years later he made some improvements in
war implements, and submitted his plans to the Woolwich Arsenal; but
they were declined, without thanks even. Some other men might have
become discouraged; but Mr. Bessemer knew that obstacles only strengthen
and develop men.

The improved ordnance having been brought to the knowledge of Napoleon
III., he encouraged the inventor, and furnished the money to carry
forward the experiments. While the guns were being tested at Vincennes,
an officer remarked, "If you cannot get stronger metal for your guns,
such heavy projectiles will be of little use." And then Mr. Bessemer
began to ask himself if he could not improve iron. But he had never
studied metallurgy. This, however, did not deter him; for he immediately
obtained the best books on the subject, and visited the iron-making
districts. Then he bought an old factory at Baxter House, where Richard
Baxter used to live, and began to experiment for himself. After a whole
year of labor he succeeded in greatly improving cast-iron, making it
almost as white as steel.

Could he not improve steel also? For eighteen months he built and pulled
down one furnace after another, at great expense. At last "the idea
struck him," he says, of making cast-iron malleable by forcing air into
the metal when in a fluid state, cast-iron being a combination of iron
and carbon. When oxygen is forced in, it unites with the carbon, and
thus the iron is left nearly pure. The experiment was tried at the
factory, in the midst of much trepidation, as the union of the
compressed air and the melted iron produced an eruption like a volcano;
but when the combustion was over, the result was steel.

Astonished and delighted, after two years and a half of labor, Bessemer
at once took out a patent; and the following week, by request, Aug. 11,
1856, read a paper before the British Association, on "The manufacture
of malleable iron and steel without fuel." There was great ridicule made
beforehand. Said one leading steel-maker to another. "I want you to go
with me this morning. There is a fellow who has come down from London to
read a paper on making steel from cast-iron without fuel! Ha! ha! ha!"

The paper was published in the "Times," and created a great sensation.
Crowds hastened to Baxter House to see the wonderful process. In three
weeks Mr. Bessemer had sold one hundred thousand dollars worth of
licenses to make steel by the new and rapid method. Fame, as well as
great wealth, seemed now assured, when lo! in two months, it being found
that only certain kinds of iron could be worked, the newspapers began to
ridicule the new invention, and scientists and business men declared
the method visionary, and worse than useless.

Mr. Bessemer collected a full portfolio of these scathing criticisms;
but he was not the man to be disconcerted or cast down. Again he began
the labor of experimenting, and found that phosphorus in the iron was
the real cause of the failure. For three long years he pursued his
investigations. His best friends tried to make him desist from what the
world had proved to be an impracticable thing. Sometimes he almost
distrusted himself, and thought he would give up trying, and then the
old desire came back more strongly than ever. At last, success was
really assured, but nobody would believe it. Every one said, "Oh, this
is the thing which made such a blaze two or three years ago, and which
was a failure."

Mr. Bessemer took several hundredweight of the new steel to some
Manchester friends, that their workmen might try it, without knowing
from whence it came. They detected no difference between this which cost
thirty dollars a ton, and what they were then using at three hundred
dollars a ton.

But nobody wanted to buy the new steel. Two years went by in this
fruitless urging for somebody to take up the manufacture of the new
metal. Finally, Bessemer induced a friend to unite with him, and they
erected works, and began to make steel. At first the dealers would buy
only twenty or thirty pounds; then the demand steadily increased. At
last the large manufacturers awoke to the fact that Bessemer was
underselling them by one hundred dollars a ton, and they hastened to pay
a royalty for making steel by the new process.

But all obstacles were not yet overcome. The Government refused to make
steel guns; the shipbuilders were afraid to touch it; and when the
engineer of the London and North-western Railway was asked to use steel
rails, he exclaimed, excitedly, "Mr. Bessemer, do you wish to see me
tried for manslaughter?" Now, steel rails are used the world over, at
the same cost as iron formerly, and are said to last twenty times as
long as iron rails.

Prejudice at last wore away, and in 1866, the "Bessemer process," the
conversion of crude iron into steel by forcing cold air through it for
fifteen or twenty minutes, was bringing to its inventor an income of
five hundred thousand dollars a year! Fame had now come, as well as
wealth. In 1874, he was made President of the Iron and Steel Institute,
to succeed the Duke of Devonshire. The Institute of Civil Engineers gave
him the Telford Gold Medal; the Society of Arts, the Albert Gold Medal.
Sweden made him honorary member of her Iron Board; Hamburg gave him the
freedom of the city; and the Emperor of Austria conferred upon him the
honor of Knight Commander of the Order of Francis Joseph, sending a
complimentary letter in connection with the jewelled cross and circular
collar of the order. Napoleon III. wished to give him the Grand Cross of
the Legion of Honor, but the English Government would not permit him to
wear it; the Emperor therefore presented him in person with a gold medal
weighing twelve ounces. Berlin and the King of Wurtemburg sent him gold
medals. In 1879 he was made Fellow of the Royal Society, and the same
year was knighted by Queen Victoria. In 1880 the freedom of the city of
London was presented to him in a gold casket; the only other great
discoverers who have received this distinction being Dr. Jenner, who
introduced vaccination, and Sir Rowland Hill, the author of penny
postage. In the United States, which gives no ribbons or decorations,
Indiana has appropriately named a flourishing town after him.

It is estimated that Sir Henry Bessemer's one discovery of making steel
has saved the world, in the last twenty-one years, above five thousand
million dollars.

When his patent expired in 1870, he had received in royalties over five
million dollars. In his steel works at Sheffield, after buying in all
the licenses sold in 1856, when the new process seemed a failure, the
profits every two months equalled the original capital, or in fourteen
years the company increased the original capital eighty-one times by the
profits.

How wise it proved that the country lad did not obtain the permanent
position of superintendent of stamps, at three thousand dollars a year!

Rich beyond his highest hopes, the friend of such eminent and
progressive men as the King of the Belgians, who visits Denmark Hill,
Sir Henry has not ceased his inventions. Knowing the terrors of
sea-sickness, he designed a great swinging saloon, seventy feet by
thirty, in the midst of a sea-going vessel named the "Bessemer." The
experiment cost one hundred thousand dollars, but has not yet proved
successful. In 1877, when sixty-four years old, he began to devote
himself to the study of Herschel's works on optics, and has since
constructed an immense and novel telescope, which magnifies five
thousand times. The instrument is placed in a comfortable observatory,
so that the investigator can either sit or stand while making his
observations. "The observing room, with its floor, windows, and dome,
revolve and keep pace automatically with every motion of the telescope."
This is accomplished by hydraulic power.

No wonder that Bessemer has been called the "great captain of modern
civilization." He has revolutionized one of the most important of the
world's industries; he has fought obstacles at every step,--poverty, the
ridicule of the press, the indifference of his countrymen, and the
cupidity of men who would steal his inventions or appropriate the
results. He has earned leisure, but he rarely takes it. His has been a
life of labor, prosecuted with indomitable will and energy. He has taken
out one hundred and twenty patents, for which the specifications and
drawings fill seven large volumes, all made by himself. The world had at
last come to know and honor the boy who came to London at the age of
eighteen, "a mere cipher in a vast sea of human enterprise." He made his
way to greatness unaided, save by his helpful wife.

Sir Henry died on the fifteenth of March, 1898, leaving an immense
fortune, which, nevertheless, was not inordinate when compared with the
services rendered by him to mankind; and a stainless name. The unfair
treatment which had embittered his earlier days had been atoned for by
the Queen granting him a title in recognition of his invention accepted
by the Post-Office, and he had come to be regarded as one of the
greatest benefactors of modern times. Such a life, crowned with such a
success, is calculated to be a mighty inspiration to every ambitious
youth.




SIR TITUS SALT.


I spent a day, with great interest, in visiting the worsted mills and
warehouses at Saltaire, just out from Bradford, England, which cover
about ten acres. The history of the proprietor, Sir Titus Salt, reads
like a romance. A poor boy, the son of a plain Yorkshire man, at
nineteen in a loose blouse he was sorting and washing wool; a little
later, a good salesman, a faithful Christian worker and the
superintendent of a Sunday school.

At thirty-three, happening to be in Liverpool, he observed on the docks
some huge pieces of dirty-looking alpaca wool. They had long lain in the
warehouses, and becoming a nuisance to the owners, were soon to be
reshipped to Peru. Young Salt took away a handful of the wool in his
handkerchief, scoured and combed it, and was amazed at its attractive
appearance. His father and friends advised him strongly to have nothing
to do with the dirty stuff, as he could sell it to no one; and if he
attempted to make cloth from it himself, he ran a great risk of failure.
Finally he said, "I am going into this alpaca affair right and left, and
I'll either make myself a man or a mouse."

[Illustration: SIR TITUS SALT.]

Returning to Liverpool, he bought the whole three hundred bales for a
small sum, and toiled diligently till proper machinery was made for the
new material. The result was a great success. In three years over two
million pounds of alpaca wool were imported, and now four million pounds
are brought to Bradford alone. Employment was soon furnished to
thousands, laborers coming from all over Great Britain and Germany. Ten
years later Mr. Salt was made mayor of Bradford; ten years after this a
member of Parliament, and ten years later still a baronet by Queen
Victoria,--a great change from the boy in his soiled coarse blouse, but
he deserved it all. He was a remarkable man in many ways. Even when
worth his millions, and giving lavishly on every hand, he would save
blank leaves and scraps of paper for writing, and lay them aside for
future use. He was an early riser, always at the works before the
engines were started. It used to be said of him, "Titus Salt makes a
thousand pounds before others are out of bed." He was punctual to the
minute, most exact, and unostentatious. After he was knighted, it was no
uncommon thing for him to take a poor woman and her baby in the carriage
beside him, or a tired workman, or scatter hundreds of tracts in a
village where he happened to be. Once a gypsy, not knowing who he was,
asked him to buy a broom. To her astonishment, he bought all she was
carrying!

The best of his acts, one which he had thought out carefully, as he
said, "to do good to his fellow-men," was the building of Saltaire for
his four thousand workmen. When asked once what he had been reading of
late, he replied. "Alpaca. If you had four or five thousand people to
provide for every day, you would not have much time left for reading."
Saltaire is a beautiful place on the banks of the river Aire, clean and
restful. In the centre of the town stands the great six-story mill,
well-ventilated, lighted, and warmed, five hundred and forty-five feet
long, of light-colored stone, costing over a half million dollars. The
four engines of eighteen hundred horse-power consume fifteen thousand
tons of coal per year. The weaving shed, covering two acres, holds
twelve hundred looms, which make eighteen miles of fabric per day.

The homes of the work-people are an honor to the capitalist. They are of
light stone, like the mill, two stories high, each containing parlor,
kitchen, pantry, and three bedrooms or more, well ventilated and
tasteful. Flower beds are in every front yard, with a vegetable garden
in the rear. No broken carts or rubbish are to be seen. Not satisfied to
make Saltaire simply healthful, by proper sanitary measures, and
beautiful, for which Napoleon III. made him one of the Legion of Honor,
Mr. Salt provided school buildings at a cost of $200,000, a
Congregational church, costing $80,000, Italian in style,--as are the
other buildings,--a hospital for sick or injured, and forty-five pretty
almshouses, like Italian villas, where the aged and infirm have a
comfortable home. Each married man and his wife receive $2.50 weekly,
and each single man or woman $1.87 for expenses. Once a year Mr. Salt
and his family used to take tea with the inmates, which was a source of
great delight.

Believing that "indoor washing is most pernicious, and a fruitful source
of disease, especially to the young," he built twenty-four baths, at a
cost of $35,000, and public wash-houses. These are supplied with three
steam engines and six washing machines. Each person bringing clothes is
provided with a rubbing and boiling tub, into which steam and hot and
cold water are conveyed by pipes. The clothes are dried by hot air, and
can be washed, dried, mangled, and folded in an hour. In Sweden, I found
the same dislike to having washing done in the homes, and clothes are
usually carried to the public wash-houses.

Perhaps the most interesting of all Mr. Salt's gifts to his workmen is
the Saltaire Club and Institute, costing $125,000; a handsome building,
with large reading-room supplied with daily papers and current
literature, a library, lecture-hall for eight hundred persons, a "School
of Art," with models, drawings, and good teachers, a billiard-room with
four tables, a room for scientific study, each student having proper
appliances for laboratory work, a gymnasium and drill-room nearly sixty
feet square, an armory for rifle-practice, and a smoking-room, though
Mr. Salt did not smoke. The membership fee for all this study and
recreation is only thirty seven cents for each three months. Opposite
the great mill is a dining-hall, where a plate of meat can be purchased
for four cents, a bowl of soup for two cents, and a cup of tea or coffee
for one cent. If the men prefer to bring their own food, it is cooked
free of charge. The manager has a fixed salary, so that there is no
temptation to scrimp the buyers.

Still another gift was made to the work-people; a park of fourteen
acres, with croquet and archery grounds, music pavilion, places for
boating and swimming, and walks with beautiful flowers. No saloon has
ever been allowed in Saltaire. Without the temptation of the beer-shops,
the boys have grown to intelligent manhood, and the girls to virtuous
womanhood. Sir Titus Salt's last gift to his workmen was a Sunday-school
building costing $50,000, where are held the "model Sunday schools of
the country," say those who have attended the meetings. No wonder, at
the death of this man, 40,000 people came to his burial,--members of
Parliament, clergymen, workingmen's unions, and ragged schools. No
wonder that statues have been erected to his memory, and that thousands
go every year to Saltaire, to see what one capitalist has done for his
laborers. No fear of strikes in his workshops; no socialism talked in
the clean and pretty homes of the men; no squalid poverty, no depraving
ignorance.

That capital is feeling its responsibility in this matter of homes for
laborers is one of the hopeful signs of the times. We shall come,
sometime, to believe with the late President Chadbourne, "The rule now
commonly acted upon is that business must be cared for, and men must
care for themselves. The principle of action, in the end, must be that
_men must be cared for_, and business must be subservient to this great
work."

If, as Spurgeon has well said, "Home is the grandest of all
institutions," capital can do no better work than look to the homes of
the laborer. It is not the mansion which the employer builds for
himself, but the home which he builds for his employe, which will insure
a safe country for his children to dwell in. If discontent and poverty
surround his palace, its foundations are weak; if intelligence has been
disseminated, and comfort promoted by his unselfish thought for others,
then he leaves a goodly heritage for his children.




JOSEPH MARIE JACQUARD.


The small world which lives in elegant houses knows little of the great
world in dingy apartments with bare walls and empty cupboards. Those who
walk or ride in the sunshine often forget the darkness of the mines, or
the tiresome treadmill of the factories.

Over a century ago, in Lyons, France, lived a man who desired to make
the lives of the toilers brighter and happier. Joseph Jacquard, the son
of a silk-weaver who died early, began his young manhood, the owner of
two looms and a comfortable little home. He had married Claudine
Boichon, the daughter of a goldsmith who expected to give his daughter a
marriage portion, but was unable from loss of property. Jacquard loved
her just as devotedly, however, as though she had brought him money. A
pretty boy was born into their home, and no family was happier in all
France. But the young loom-owner saw the poor weavers working from four
in the morning till nine at night, in crowded rooms, whole families
often bending over a loom, their chests shrunken and their cheeks
sallow from want of air and sunlight; and their faces dull and vacant
from the monotony of unvaried toil. There were no holidays, no walks in
the fields among the flowers, no reading of books, nothing but the
constant routine which wore out body and mind together. There was no
home-life; little children grew pinched and old; and mothers went too
early to their graves. If work stopped, they ate the bread of charity,
and went to the almshouse. The rich people of Lyons were not
hard-hearted, but they did not _think_; they were too busy with their
parties and their marriages; too busy buying and selling that they might
grow richer. But Jacquard was always thinking how he could lighten the
labor of the silk-weavers by some invention.

The manufacture of silk had become a most important industry. Seventeen
hundred years before Christ the Chinese had discovered the making of
silk from silk-worms, and had cultivated mulberry-trees. They forbade
anybody to export the eggs or to disclose the process of making the
fabric, under penalty of death. The Roman Emperor Justinian determined
to wrest this secret from China, and thus revive the resources of his
empire. He sent two monks, who ostensibly preached Christianity, but in
reality studied silk-worms, and, secreting some eggs in two hollow
reeds, returned to Justinian, and breaking these canes, laid the eggs on
the lap of the beautiful Empress Theodora. From this the art spread into
Italy, and thence into France.

The more Jacquard thought how he could help the silk-weavers of France
the more he became absorbed, and forgot that money was needed to support
his family. Soon the looms had to be sold at auction, with his small
home. The world ridiculed, and his relatives blamed him; but Claudine
his wife encouraged him, and prophesied great fame for him in the
future. She sold her little treasures, and even her bed, to pay his
debts. Finally, when there was no food in the house, with tears in his
eyes, Jacquard left his wife and child, to become a laborer for a
lime-burner in a neighboring town. Claudine went to work in a
straw-bonnet factory; and for sixteen years they battled with poverty.

Then the French Revolution burst upon Lyons in 1793. Her crime before
such murderers as Robespierre and Marat was that she was the friend of
Louis XVI. Sixty thousand men were sent against her by the so-called
Republicans, who were commanded to utterly destroy her, and write over
the ruins, "Lyons made war upon liberty; Lyons is no more." Six thousand
persons were put to death, their houses burned, and twelve thousand
exiled; among them Jacquard.

His only child, a brave boy of sixteen, had joined the Republican ranks,
that he might fight against the foreign armies of England, Austria, and
Naples, who had determined, under Pitt, to crush out the new government.
At the boy's earnest request his father enlisted with him, and together
they marched toward the Rhine. In one of the first battles a
cannon-ball struck the idolized son, who fell expiring in Jacquard's
arms. Covered with the blood of his only child, he dug a grave for him
on the battle-field; and exhausted and heart-broken went to the hospital
till his discharge was obtained.

He returned to Lyons and sought his poor wife. At last he found her in
the outskirts of the city, living in a hay-loft, and earning the barest
pittance by spreading out linen for the laundresses to dry. She divided
her crusts with her husband, while they wept together over their
irreparable loss. She soon died of grief, but, with her last words, bade
Jacquard go forward in developing his genius, and have trust in God, who
would yet show him the way of success. Blessed Claudine! A sweet,
beautiful soul, shining like a star in the darkness of the French
Revolution.

Jacquard with all earthly ties severed went back to the seclusion of
inventing. After his day's work was done as a laborer, he studied on his
machine for silk-weaving. Finally, after seven years,--a long time to
patiently develop an idea,--he had produced a loom which would decrease
the number of workmen at each machine, by one person. The model was
placed at the Paris Industrial Exposition in 1801; and the maker was
awarded a bronze medal. In gratitude for this discovery he went to the
image of the Virgin which stood on a high hill, and for nine days
ascended daily the steps of the sacred place. Then he returned to his
work, and seating himself before a Vaucanson loom, which contained the
germ of his own, he consecrated himself anew to the perfecting of his
invention.

Jacques de Vaucanson, who died when Jacquard was thirty years old, was
one of the most celebrated mechanicians of France. His automatons were
the wonder of the age. He exhibited a duck which, when moved, ate and
drank like a live one. The figure would stretch out its neck for food,
and swallow it: walk, swim, dabble in the water, and quack most
naturally. His musician, playing the flageolet with the left hand, and
beating the tambourine with the right, executing many pieces of
difficult music with great accuracy, was an astonishment to every body.
He had been appointed inspector of silk-factories at Lyons, and, because
he made some improvements in machines, he was pelted with stones by the
workmen, who feared that they would thereby lose their labor. He
revenged himself by making a machine which wove, brocaded, and colored
at the same time, and was worked by a donkey!

It remained for Jacquard to make the Vaucanson loom of the utmost
practical use to Lyons and to the world. After a time he was not only
able to dispense with one workman at each loom, but he made machinery do
the work of three men and two women at each frame. The city authorities
sent a model of this machine to Paris, that the Emperor Napoleon might
examine it. So pleased was he that he at once sent for Jacquard to come
to Paris. The latter had previously invented a machine for making
fishing-nets, now used in producing Nottingham lace. When brought before
Bonaparte, and Carnot the Minister of the Interior, the latter asked,
"Is it you then, who pretend to do a thing which is impossible for
man,--to make a knot upon a tight thread?"

Jacquard answered the brusque inquiry by setting up a machine, and
letting the incredulous minister see for himself.

The Emperor made Jacquard welcome to the _Conservatoire des Arts et
Metiers_, where he could study books and machines to his heart's
content, and gave him a pension of about twelve hundred dollars for his
discovery. When he had, with his own hands, woven a magnificent brocaded
silk dress for the Empress Josephine, he returned to Lyons to set up the
Jacquard looms. His name began to be lauded everywhere. Claudine's
prophecies had at last come true. She had given her life to help him;
but she could not live to share his honors.

Soon, however, the tide of praise turned. Whole families found
themselves forced into the street for lack of work, as the looms were
doing what their hands had done. Bands of unemployed men were shouting,
"Behold the traitor! Let him provide for our wives and children now
driven as mendicants from door to door; or let him, the destroyer of
the peoples' labor, share in the death which he has prepared for us!"
The authorities seemed unable to quell the storm, and by their orders
the new loom was broken in pieces on the public square. "The iron," says
Jacquard, "was sold as old iron; the wood, for fuel." One day he was
seized by a crowd of starving workmen, who knocked him down, and dragged
him to the banks of the Rhone, where he would have been drowned at once,
had not the police rescued him, bleeding and nearly dead. He left the
city overwhelmed with astonishment and sorrow. Soon Switzerland,
Germany, Italy, and America were using the Jacquard looms, largely
increasing the manufacture and sale of silk, and therefore the number of
laborers. The poor men of Lyons awoke to the sad fact, that by breaking
up Jacquard's machines, they had put the work of silk-weaving into other
hands all over the world; and idleness was proving their ruin. They
might have doubled and trebled the number of their factories, and
benefited labor a thousand-fold.

The inventor refused to take out a patent for himself, nor would he
accept any offers made him by foreigners, because he thought all his
services belonged to France. He loved the working people, who, for
twenty years, were too blind to see it.

He removed to a little home and garden at Oullins, near Lyons, the use
of which had been given him for life, where he could hear the sound of
his precious looms on which he had worked for sixty years, and which
his city had at last adopted. Here he attended his garden, and went
every morning to early church, distributing each day some small pieces
of money to poor children. As old age came on, Lyons realized the
gratitude due her great inventor. A silver medal was awarded him, and
then the grand distinction of the cross of the Legion of Honor.

People from the neighboring towns visited Oullins, and pointed out with
pride the noble old man at eighty-four, sitting by his garden-wall,
dressed like a workman in his long black tunic, but wearing his broad
red ribbon with his cross of honor. Illustrious travellers and statesmen
visited him whose fame was now spread through Europe and America.

Toinette, a faithful servant who had known and loved Claudine, watched
over the pure-hearted Jacquard till death came, Aug. 7, 1834. Six years
after, Lyons, which once broke his machine and nearly killed him, raised
a beautiful statue of him in the public square. The more than seventy
thousand looms in the city, employing two hundred thousand workmen, are
grander monuments even than the statue. The silk-weavers are better
housed and fed than formerly. The struggling, self-sacrificing man, who
might have been immensely rich as well as famous, was an untold blessing
to labor and to the world.




HORACE GREELEY.


Among the hills of New Hampshire, in a lonely, unpainted house, Horace
Greeley was born, Feb. 3, 1811, the third of seven children. His father
was a plain farmer, hard-working, yet not very successful, but aided by
a wife of uncommon energy and good spirits, notwithstanding her many
cares. Besides her housework, and spinning, and making the children's
clothes, she hoed in the garden, raked and loaded hay to help her
husband, laughing and singing all day long, and telling her feeble
little son, Horace, stories and legends all the evening. Her first two
children having died, this boy was especially dear. Mrs. Greeley was a
great reader of such books as she could obtain, and remembered all she
read. It requires no great discernment to see from whence Horace Greeley
derived his intense love for reading, and his boundless energy.

[Illustration: HORACE GREELEY.]

He learned to read, one can scarcely tell how. When two years old, he
would pore over the Bible, as he lay on the floor, and ask questions
about the letters; at three, he went to the "district school," often
carried through the deep snow on the shoulders of one of his aunts, or
on the back of an older boy. He soon stood at the head of his little
class in spelling and reading, "and took it so much to heart when he did
happen to lose his place, that he would cry bitterly; so that some boys,
when they had gained the right to get above him, declined the honor,
because it hurt Horace's feelings so."

Before he was six years old he had read the Bible through, and
"Pilgrim's Progress." Their home contained only about twenty books, and
these he read and re-read. As he grew older, every book within seven
miles was borrowed, and perused after the hard day's work of farming was
over. He gathered a stock of pine knots, and, lighting one each night,
lay down by the hearth, and read, oblivious to all around him. The
neighbors came and made their friendly visits, and ate apples and drank
cider, as was the fashion, but the lad never noticed their coming or
their going. When really forced to leave his precious books for bed, he
would repeat the information he had learned, or the lessons for the next
day, to his brother, who usually, most ungraciously, fell asleep before
the conversation was half completed.

When Horace was nearly ten years old, his father, who had speculated in
a small way in lumber, became a bankrupt; his house and furniture were
sold by the sheriff, and he was obliged to flee from the State to avoid
arrest. Some of these debts were paid, thirty years afterward, by his
noble son. Going to Westhaven, Vt., Mr. Greeley obtained work on a farm,
and moved his family thither. They were very poor, the children sitting
on the floor and eating their porridge together out of a tin pan; but
they were happy in the midst of their hard work and plain food. The
father and the boys chopped logs, and the little sisters, with the
mother, gathered them in heaps, the voice of the latter, says Mr. James
Parton, in his biography, "ringing out in laughter from the tangled
brushwood in which she was often buried." Would there were thousands
more of such women, who can laugh at disaster, and keep their children
and themselves from getting soured with life. Everybody has troubles;
and very wise are they who do not tell them, either in their faces or by
their words.

Horace earned a few pennies all his own; sometimes by selling nuts, or
bundles of the roots of pitch-pine for kindling, which he carried on his
back to the store. This money he spent in books, buying Mrs. Hemans's
poetry and "Shakspeare." No wonder that the minister of the town said,
"Mark my words; that boy was not made for nothing."

He could go to school no longer, and must now support himself. From
earliest childhood he had determined to be a printer; so, when eleven
years of age, he walked nine miles to see the publisher of a newspaper,
and obtain a situation. The editor looked at the small, tow-haired boy,
shook his head, and said, "You are too young." With a heavy heart the
child walked the long nine miles back again. But he must do something;
and, a little later, with seventy-five cents in his pocket, and some
food tied in a bundle, which he hung on the end of a stick, slung over
his shoulder, he walked one hundred and twenty miles back to New
Hampshire, to see his relatives. After some weeks he returned, with a
few more cents in his purse than when he started!

The father Greeley ought to have foreseen that such energy and will
would produce results; but because Horace, in a fit of abstraction,
tried to yoke the "off" ox on the "near" side, he said, "Ah! that boy
will never get along in the world. He'll never know more than enough to
come in when it rains." Alas! for the blindness of Zaccheus Greeley,
whose name even would not be remembered but for his illustrious son.

When Horace was fourteen, he read in a newspaper that an apprentice was
wanted in a printing-office eleven miles distant. He hastened thither,
and, though unprepossessing, from his thin voice, short pantaloons, lack
of stockings, and worn hat, he was hired on trial. The first day he
worked at the types in silence. Finally the boys began to tease him with
saucy remarks, and threw type at him; but he paid no attention. On the
third day, one of the apprentices took a large black ball, used to put
ink on the type, and remarking that Horace's hair was too light, daubed
his head four times. The pressman and editor both stopped their labors
to witness a fight; but they were disappointed, for the boy never turned
from his work. He soon left his desk, spent an hour in washing the ink
from his hair, and returned to his duties. Seeing that he could not be
irritated, and that he was determined to work, he became a great
favorite.

When at his type, he would often compose paragraphs for the paper,
setting up the words without writing them out. He soon joined a debating
society, composed of the best-informed persons of the little town of
East Poultney,--the minister, the doctor, the lawyer, the
schoolteachers, and the like. What was their surprise to find that the
young printer knew almost every thing, and was always ready to speak, or
read an essay.

He was often laughed at because of his poor clothes, and pitied because,
slender and pale as he was, he never wore an overcoat; but he used to
say, "I guess I'd better wear my old clothes than run in debt for new
ones." Ah! they did not know that every penny was saved and sent to the
father, struggling to clear a farm in the wilderness in Pennsylvania.
During his four years' apprenticeship he visited his parents twice,
though six hundred miles distant, and walked most of the way.

Soon after he had learned his trade, the newspaper suspended, and he was
thrown out of work. The people with whom he boarded gave him a brown
overcoat, not new, and with moistened eyes said good-by to the poor
youth whom they had learned to love as their own. He remained a few
weeks with his family, then walked fifty miles east to a town in New
York State, where he found plenty of work, but no money, and in six
weeks returned to the log-cabin. After trying various towns, he found a
situation in Erie, taking the place of a workman who was ill, and for
seven months he did not lose a day. Out of his wages--eighty-four
dollars--he had used only six, less than one dollar a mouth! Putting
fifteen dollars in his pocket, he took the balance of sixty-three in a
note, and gave it to his father. A noble son indeed, who would not buy a
single garment for himself, but carried the money home, so as to make
the poor ones a trifle more comfortable!

He had become tired of working in the small towns; he determined to go
to the great city of New York, and "be somebody." He walked a part of
the way by the tow-path along the canal, and sometimes rode in a scow.
Finally, at sunrise, Friday, Aug. 18, 1831, he landed close to the
Battery, with ten dollars in his pocket, knowing, he says, "no human
being within two hundred miles." His first need was a boarding-place.
Over a saloon, kept by an Irishman, he found room and board for two
dollars and a half a week. Fortunately, though it was the almost
universal custom to use liquors, Horace was a teetotaler, and despised
chewing or smoking tobacco, which he regarded "as the vilest, most
detestable abuse of his corrupted sensual appetites whereof depraved man
is capable;" therefore he had no fear of temptation from these sources.

All day Friday and Saturday he walked the streets of New York, looking
for work. The editor of the "Journal of Commerce" told him plainly that
he was a runaway apprentice from the country, and he did not want him.
"I returned to my lodging on Saturday evening, thoroughly weary,
disheartened, disgusted with New York, and resolved to shake its dust
from my feet next Monday morning, while I could still leave with money
in my pocket, and before its almshouse could foreclose upon me." On
Sunday he went to church, both morning and afternoon. Late in the day, a
friend who called upon the owner of the house, learning that the printer
wanted work, said he had heard of a vacancy at Mr. West's, 85 Chatham
Street.

The next morning Horace was at the shop at half-past five! New York was
scarcely awake; even the newsboys were asleep in front of the paper
offices. He waited for an hour and a half,--a day, it seemed to
him,--when one of the journey-men arrived, and, finding the door locked,
sat down beside the stranger. He, too, was a Vermonter, and he
determined to help young Greeley, if possible. He took him to the
foreman, who decided to try him on a Polyglot Testament, with marginal
references, such close work that most of the men refused to do it. Mr.
West came an hour or two later, and said, in anger, "Did you hire that
fool?"

"Yes; we need help, and he was the best I could get," said the foreman.

"Well, pay him off to-night, and let him go about his business."

When night came, however, the country youth had done more and better
work, than anybody who had tried the Testament. By beginning his labors
before six in the morning, and not leaving his desk till nine in the
evening, working by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, he could
earn six dollars a week. At first his fellow-workmen called him "the
ghost," from his white hair and complexion; but they soon found him
friendly, and willing to lend money, which, as a rule, was never
returned to him; they therefore voted him to be a great addition to the
shop. As usual, though always scrupulously clean, he wore his poor
clothes, no stockings, and his wristbands tied together with twine. Once
he bought a second-hand black suit of a Jew, for five dollars, but it
proved a bad bargain. His earnings were sent, as before, to his parents.

After a year, business grew dull, and he was without a place. For some
months he worked on various papers, when a printer friend, Mr. Story,
suggested that they start in business, their combined capital being one
hundred and fifty dollars. They did so, and their first work was the
printing of a penny "Morning Post," which suspended in three weeks, they
losing sixty dollars. The partner was drowned shortly after, and his
brother-in-law took his place.

Young Greeley, now twenty-three, and deeply interested in politics,
determined to start a weekly paper. Fifteen of his friends promised to
subscribe for it. The "New Yorker" was begun, and so well conducted was
it that three hundred papers throughout the country gave it
complimentary notices. It grew to a subscription list of nine thousand
persons; but much of the business was done on trust, times were hard,
and, after seven years, the enterprise had to be abandoned. This was a
severe trial to the hard-working printer, who had known nothing but
struggles all his life. Years after this he wrote, "Through most of this
time I was very poor, and for four years really bankrupt, though always
paying my notes, and keeping my word, but living as poorly as possible.
My embarrassments were sometimes dreadful; not that I feared
destitution, but the fear of involving my friends in my misfortunes was
very bitter.... I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave
in a rice-swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt.
Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are
disagreeable, but debt is infinitely worse than them all. Avoid
pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. If you have but
fifty cents, and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch
it, and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar."

Meantime the young editor had married Miss Mary Y. Cheney, a
schoolteacher of unusual mind and strength of character. It was, of
course, a comfort to have some one to share his sorrows; but it pained
his tender heart to make another help bear his burdens. Beside editing
the "New Yorker," he had also taken charge of the "Jeffersonian," a
weekly campaign paper published at Albany, and the "Log-Cabin,"
established to aid in the election of General Harrison to the
Presidency. The latter paper was a great success, the circulation
running up to ninety thousand, though very little money was made; but it
gave Mr. Greeley a reputation in all parts of the country for
journalistic ability.

President Harrison died after having been a month in office; and seven

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