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 hislittle 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 toopen 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 anymeans 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 forthought. 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 littlechildren, 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 hewould 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 gottendeeply 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. Fancyinghimself 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 whodiscovered 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 theashes 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.
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.
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 watchingan 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, andMason 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, "Areyouashamed 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 waitfor 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 columnsso 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.
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.
BERNARD PALISSY.
Finally, like other young people, he fell in love, and was married at twenty-eight. He could nottravel 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 theenamel 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 discoveredwas 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 watchedthe 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 oldpromise,—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 bookswhich 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 andI, 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.
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 modestthat, 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 andwretched. 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 fivehundred 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 madethirtymodels 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 receptionThe 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.
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.
WolfgangAmadeusMozart 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.