the phenomenon must be left to conjecture. Enough that the story has a solid foundation upon which we can build. This more than justifies us in classing it with "Newton and the Apple," "Bruce and the Spider," "Tell and the Apple," "Galvani and the Frog," "Volta and the Damp Cloth," "Washington and His Little Hatchet," a string of gems, amongst the most precious of our legendary possessions. Let no rude iconoclast attempt to undermine one of them. Even if they never occurred, it matters little. They should have occurred, for they are too good to lose. We could part with many of the actual characters of the flesh in history without much loss; banish the imaginary host of the spirit and we were poor indeed. So with these inspiring legends; let us accept them and add others gladly as they arise, inquiring not too curiously into their origin.

While Watt was still in boyhood, his wise father not only taught him writing and arithmetic, but also provided a set of small tools for him in the shop among the workmen a wise and epoch-making gift, for young Watt soon revealed such wonderful manual dexterity, and could do such astonishing things, that the verdict of one of the workmen, "Jamie has a 'fortune at his finger-ends," became a common saying among them. The most complicated work seemed to come naturally to him. One model after another was produced to the wonder and delight of his older fellow

workmen. Jamie was the pride of the shop, and no doubt of his fond father, who saw with pardonable pride that his promising son inherited his own traits, and gave bright promise of excelling as a skilled handicraftsman.

The mechanical dexterity of the Watts, grandfather, father and son, is not to be belittled, for most of the mechanical inventions have come from those who have been cunning of hand and have worked as manual laborers, generally in charge of the machinery or devices which they have improved. When new processes have been invented, these also have usually suggested themselves to the able workmen as they experienced the crudeness of existing methods. Indeed, few important inventions have come from those who have not been thus employed. It is with inventors as with poets; few have been born to the purple or with silver spoons in their mouths, and we shall plainly see later on that had it not been for Watt's inherited and acquired manual dexterity, it is probable that the steam engine could never have been perfected, so often did failure of experiments arise solely because it was in that day impossible to find men capable of executing the plans of the inventor. His problem was to teach them by example how to obtain the exact work required when the tools of precision of our day were unknown and the men themselves were only workmen of the crudest kind. Many of the most

delicate parts, even of working engines, passed through Watt's own hands, and for most of his experimental devices he had himself to make the models. Never was there an inventor who had such reason to thank fortune that in his youth he had learned to work with his hands. It proved literally true, as his fellowworkmen in the shop predicted, that "Jamie's fortune was at his finger-ends."

As before stated, he proved a backward scholar for a time, at the grammar school. No one seems to have divined the latent powers smoldering within. Latin and Greek classics moved him not, for his mind was stored with more entrancing classics learned at his mother's knee: his heroes were of nobler mould than the Greek demigods, and the story of his own romantic land more fruitful than that of any other of the past. Busy working man has not time to draw his inspiration from more than one national literature. Nor has any man yet drawn fully from any but that of his native tongue. We can no more draw our mental sustenance from two languages than we can think in two. Man can have but one deep source from whence come healing waters, as he can have but one mother tongue. So it was with Watt. He had Scotland and that sufficed. When the boy absorbs, or rather is absorbed by, Wallace, The Bruce, and Sir John Grahame, is fired by the story of the Martyrs, has at heart page after page of the country's ballads, and

also, in more recent times, is at home with Burns' and Scott's prose and poetry, he has little room and less desire, and still less need, for inferior heroes. So the dead languages and their semi-supernatural, quarrelsome, self-seeking heroes passed in review without gaining admittance to the soul of Watt. But the spare that fired him came at last-Mathematics. "Happy is "the man who has found his work," says Carlyle. Watt found his when yet a boy at school. Thereafter never a doubt existed as to the field of his labors. The choice of an occupation is a serious matter with most young men. There was never room for any question of choice with young Watt. The occupation had chosen him, as is the case with genius. "Talent does "what it can, genius what it must." When the goddess lays her hand upon a mortal dedicated to her shrine, concentration is the inevitable result; there is no room for anything which does not contribute to her service, or rather all things are made contributory to it, and nothing that the devotee sees or reads, hears or feels, but some way or other is made to yield sustenance for the one great, overmastering task. "The gods send "thread for a web begun," because the web absorbs everything that comes within reach. So it proved with Watt.

At fifteen, he had twice carefully read "The Ele"ments of Philosophy" (Gravesend), and had made numerous chemical experiments, repeating them again

and again, until satisfied of their accuracy. A small electrical machine was one of his productions with which he startled his companions. Visits to his uncle Muirhead at Glasgow were frequent, and here he formed acquaintance with several educated young men, who appreciated his abilities and kindly nature; but the visits to the same kind uncle "on the bonnie, "bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond," where the summer months were spent, gave the youth his happiest days. Indefatigable in habits of observation and research, and devoted to the lonely hills, he extended his knowledge by long excursions, adding to his botanical and mineral treasures. Freely entering the cottages of the people, he spent hours learning their traditions, superstitions, ballads, and all the Celtic lore. He loved nature in her wildest moods, and was a true child of the mist, brimful of poetry and romance, which he was ever ready to shower upon his friends. An omniverous reader, in after life he vindicated his practice of reading every book he found, alleging that he had "never yet read a book or conversed with a companion "without gaining information, instruction or amuse"ment." Scott has left on record that he never had met and conversed with a man who could not tell him something he did not know. Watt seems to have resembled Sir Walter, "who spoke to every man he "met as if he were a brother". -as indeed he was-one of the many fine traits of that noble, wholesome char