would have to be taught a trade, instead of succeeding to the business, as had been the intention.

Fortunate it was for our subject, and especially so for the world, that he was thus favored by falling heir to the best heritage of all, as Mr. Morley calls it in his address to the Midland Institute-" the necessity at an "early age to go forth into the world and work for "the means needed for his own support." President Garfield's verdict was to the same effect, "The best "heritage to which a man can be born is poverty." The writer's knowledge of the usual effect of the heritage of milliondom upon the sons of millionaires leads him fully to concur with these high authorities, and to believe that it is neither to the rich nor to the noble that human society has to look for its preservation and improvement, but to those who, like Watt, have to labor that they may live, and thus make a proper return for what they receive, as working bees, not drones, in the social hive. Not from palace or castle, but from the cottage have come, or can come, the needed leaders of our race, under whose guidance it is to ascend.

We have a fine record in the three generations of the Watts, great-grandfather, grandfather and father, all able and successful men, whose careers were marked by steady progress, growing in usefulness to their fellows; men of unblemished character, kind and considerate, winning the confidence and affection of

their neighbors, and leaving behind them records unstained.

So much for the male branch of the family tree, but this is only half. What of that of the grandmothers and mothers of the line-equally important? For what a Scotch boy born to labor is to become, and how, cannot be forecast until we know what his mother is, who is to him nurse, servant, governess, teacher and saint, all in one. We must look to the Watt women as carefully as to the men; and these fortunately we find all that can be desired. His mother was Agnes Muirhead, a descendant of the Muirheads of Lachop, who date away back before the reign of King David, 1122. Scott, in his "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," gives us the old ballad of "The Laird of Muirhead," who played a great part in these unsettled days.

The good judgment which characterised the Watts for three generations is nowhere more clearly shown than in the lady James Watt's father courted and finally succeeded in securing for his wife. She is described as a gentlewoman of reserved and quiet deportment,

esteemed by her neighbours for graces of person as "well as of mind and heart, and not less distinguished "for her sound sense and good manners than for her "cheerful temper and excellent housewifery." Her likeness is thus drawn, and all that we have read elsewhere concerning her confirms the truth of the portrait. Williamson says that

the lady to whom he (Thomas Watt) was early united in marriage was Miss Agnes Muirhead, a gentlewoman of good understanding and superior endowments, whose excellent management in household affairs would seem to have contributed much to the order of her establishment, as well as to the every-day happiness of a cheerful home. She is described as having been a person above common in many respects, of a fine womanly presence, ladylike in appearance, affecting in domestic arrangements-according to our traditions-what, it would seem was considered for the time, rather a superior style of living. What such a style consisted in, the reader shall have the means of judging for himself. One of the author's informants on such points more than twenty years ago, a venerable lady, then in her eighty-fifth year, was wont to speak of the worthy Bailie's wife with much characteristic interest and animation. As illustrative of what has just been remarked of the internal economy of the family, the old lady related an occasion on which she had spent an evening, when a girl, at Mrs. Watt's house, and remembered expressing with much naïveté to her mother, on returning home, her childish surprise that "Mrs. Watt had two candles lighted on the table!" Among these and other reminiscences of her youth, one venerable informant described James Watt's mother, in her eloquent and expressive Doric, as, "a braw, braw, woman-none now to be seen like her."

There is another account from a neighbor, who also refers to Mrs. Watt as being somewhat of the grand lady, but always so kind, so sweet, so helpful to all her neighbors.

The Watt family for generations steadily improved and developed. A great step upward was made the day Agnes Muirhead was captured. We are liable to forget how little of the original strain of an old family remains in after days. We glance over the record of the Cecils, for instance, to find that the present Marquis

has less than one four-thousandth part of the Cecil blood; a dozen marriages have each reduced it onehalf, and the recent restoration of the family to its pristine greatness in the person of the late Prime Minister, and in his son, the brilliant young Parliamentarian, of whom great things are predicted already, is to be credited equally to the recent infusion into the Cecil family of the entirely new blood of two successive brides, daughters of commoners who made their own way in the world. One was the mother of the late statesman, the other his wife and the mother of his sons. So with the Watt family, of which we have records of three marriages. Our Watt, therefore, had but one-eighth of the original Watt strain; seveneighths being that of the three ladies who married into the family. Upon the entrance of a gentlewoman of Agnes Muirhead's qualities hung important results, for she was a remarkable character with the indefinable air of distinction, was well educated, had a very wise head, a very kind heart and all the sensibility and enthusiasm of the Celt, easily touched to fine issues. She was a Scot of the Scots and a storehouse of border lore, as became a daughter of her house, Muirhead of Lachop.

Here, then, we have existing in the quiet village of Greenock in 1736, unknown of men, all the favorable conditions, the ideal soil, from which might be expected to appear such "variation of species" as contained that

rarest of elements, the divine spark we call genius. In due time the "variation" made its appearance, now known as Watt, the creator of the most potent instrument of mechanical force known to man.

The fond mother having lost several of her children born previously was intensely solicitous in her care of James, who was so delicate that regular attendance at school was impossible. The greater part of his school years he was confined most of the time to his room. This threw him during most of his early years into his mother's company and tender care. Happy chance! What teacher, what companionship, to compare with that of such a mother! She taught him to read most of what he then knew, and, we may be sure, fed him on the poetry and romance upon which she herself had fed, and for which he became noted in after life. He was rated as a backward scholar at school, and his education was considered very much neglected.

Let it not be thought, however, that the lad was not being educated in some very important departments. The young mind was absorbing, though its acquisitions did not count in the school records. Much is revealed of his musings and inward development in the account of a visit which he paid to his grandmother Muirhead in Glasgow, when it was thought that a change would benefit the delicate boy. We read with pleasant surprise that he had to be sent for, at the request of the family, and taken home. He kept the household