"No, my lad," was his reply, "I put lightning into it."

I wondered how the "lightning" was going to be conveyed to the interior surface of the glass without any conductor, such as water, but was too much abashed to ask the question.

Moore's "Navigator" taught not only a very crude sort of trigonometry, but a good deal about the warship of his time. To a boy living on the seacoast, who naturally thought a ship of war one of the greatest works of man, the book was of much interest.

Notwithstanding the intellectual pleasure which I have described, my boyhood was on the whole one of sadness. Occasionally my love of books brought a word of commendation from some visitor, perhaps a Methodist minister, who patted me on the head with a word of praise. Otherwise it caused only exclamations of wonder which were distasteful.

"You would n't believe what larnin' that boy has got. He has more larnin' than all the people around here put together," I heard one farmer say to another, looking at me, in my own view of the case, as if I were some monster misshapen in the womb. Instead of feeling that my bookish taste was something to be valued, I looked upon myself as a lusus naturæ whom Nature had cruelly formed to suffer from an abnormal constitution, and lamented that somehow I never could be like other boys.

The maladroitness described by my father, of which I was fully conscious, added to the feeling of my unfitness for the world around me. The skill required on a farm was above my reach, where efficiency in driving oxen was one of the most valued of accomplishments. I keenly felt my inability to acquire even respectable mediocrity in this branch of the agricultural profession. It was mortifying to watch the dexterous motions of the whip and listen to the torrent of imperatives with which a young farmer would set a team of these stolid animals in motion after they had failed to respond to my gentle requests, though conveyed in the best of ox language.

I had indeed gradually formed, from reading, a vague conception of a different kind of world, a world of light, where dwelt men who wrote books and people who knew the men who wrote books, where lived boys who went to college and devoted themselves to learning, instead of driving oxen. I longed much to get into this world, but no possibility of doing so presented itself. I had no idea that it would be imbued with sympathy for a boy outside of it who wanted to learn. True, I had once read in some story, perhaps fictitious, how a nobleman had found a boy reading Newton's "Principia," and not only expressed his pleased surprise at the performance, but actually got the boy educated. But there was no nobleman in sight of the backwoods of Nova Scotia. I read in the autobiography of Franklin how he had made

his way in life. But he was surrounded with opportunities from which I was cut off. It does seem a little singular that, well known as my tastes were to those around me, we never met a soul to say, "That boy ought to be educated." So far as I know, my father's idea of making me a lawyer met with nothing but ridicule from the neighbors. Did not a lawyer have to know Latin and have money to pursue his studies? In my own daydreams I was a farmer driving his own team; in my mother's a preacher, though she had regretfully to admit that I might never be good enough for this profession.

II

DOCTOR FOSHAY

In the summer of 1851, when I had passed the age of sixteen, we lived in a little school district a mile or two from the town of Yarmouth, N. S. Late in the summer we had a visit from a maternal uncle and aunt. As I had not seen Moncton since I was six years old, and as I wanted very much to visit my grandfather Prince once more, it was ar ranged that I should accompany them on their return home. An additional reason for this was that my mother's health had quite failed; there was no prospect of my doing anything where I was, and it was hoped that something might turn up at Moncton. There was but one difficulty; the visitors had driven to St. John in their own little carriage, which would hold only two people; so they could not take me back. I must therefore find my own way from St. John to Moncton.

We crossed the Bay of Fundy in a little sailing vessel. Among the passengers was an English ship captain who had just been wrecked off the coast of Newfoundland, and had the saved remnant of his crew with him. On the morning of our departure the weather was stormy, so that our

vessel did not put to sea-a precaution for which the captain passenger expressed great contempt. He did not understand how a vessel should delay going to sea on account of a little storm.

The walk of one hundred miles from St. John to Moncton was for me, at that time, a much less formidable undertaking than it would appear in our times and latitude. A thirty-mile tramp was a bagatelle, and houses of entertainment - farmhouses where a traveler could rest or eat for a few pennies -were scattered along the road. But there was one great difficulty at the start. My instructions had been to follow the telegraph wires. I soon found that the line of telegraph came into the town from one direction, passed through it, and then left, not in the opposite direction, but perhaps at right angles to it. In which direction was the line to be followed? It was difficult to make "Why, my boy, you can't

known what I wanted. walk to Moncton," was one answer. In a shop the clerks thought I wanted to ride on the telegraph, and, with much chuckling, directed me to the telegraph office where the man in charge would send me on. I tried in one direction which I thought could not be right, then I started off in the opposite one; but it soon became evident that that branch led up the river to Frederickton. So I had to retrace my steps and take the original line, which proved to be the right one.

The very first night I found that my grandfather's name was one to conjure with. I passed it