inflict, and at times indulged in vigorous denunciation of the "Abolitionists." He inquired what kind of looking people they were, quite in the manner one would do who had heard of some horrid species of savage nowise like to ordinary humanity. Like others, too, who better comprehended what was involved in a fight to preserve slavery, he frequently cursed William L. Yancy and Jefferson Davis. But the loyalty of the Southerner generally to the South was a double distilled patriotism which did not in any like degree embrace their country. This spirit smothered Union sentiment by its aggressive force.

During the secession agitation and the prevailing excitement that followed Lincoln's nomination, it was wonderful to discover how positively the negroes looked to "Massa Linkum' as their sure deliverer. When an occasion offered for private communication, I was frequently asked "if 'Linkum' was elected," and "how soon he would set us free."

If I tried to explain that Mr. Lincoln as president would have no power to set them free, they would look sad and thoughtful for a little while, but invariably would close the interview by saying in the most confident manner, "But Massa Linkum he'll set us free," and this conviction seemed equally pungent in the minds of white people.

At the time the attack on Fort Sumter was in progress I witnessed in Mobile the embarkation of a com

pany sent as a body-guard to Davis at Montgomery, when the Confederate administration was in that city. They were a picked and splendid display of physical manhood and military accomplishment. As a young man stepped on deck, and was grasped by the hand of some city official apparently acting as host, the soldier said with an imperial air of assurance, "I'll bring you one of his eye teeth!" meaning Lincoln's.

It was as if the voice of fate had whispered in every soul, of the master and the slave, the white and the black, that Lincoln was the man chosen of God to break in pieces the system which had been their inheritance, and to remove the curse of the nation and the wrongs of the slave.

It was a poignant sorrow to witness the opening of that deadly strife between brother and brother, friend and friend. The kindness received in that land, and up to the moment of departure, when a richly filled lunch basket, and a carriage my friends of a short acquaintance would not allow me to pay for, were provided, will remain a sweet remembrance forever.

When my thoughts revert to that beautiful land and its kind-hearted people, I dream of the time when the blight of slavery and war will have disappeared, and the social life and institutions of the sunny South shall harmonize with its natural beauties and delights, and its wealth of resources. God and human wisdom speed the day!

nights. What a hard position! He grasped thoroughly the production of power by steam, and seems with prophetic power to have realized all that it was capable of accomplishing. His was the true insight of genius, yet he was hampered for years in every undertaking by lack of means, by clumsy, ignorant assistants, and a painful lack of confidence in himself. "The total depravity of inanimate things" also seemed destined to destroy his hopes.

After working for six months on a new engine, expending a vast amount or labor, anxiety, and ingenuity, he himself declared it was "a clumsy job." The new arrangement of the pipe condenser did not work well, and the cylinder, having been badly cast, was almost useless. One of his greatest difficulties consisted in keeping the piston tight. He wrapped it round with cork, oiled rags, tow, old hats, paper, horse dung, and a variety of other things; still there were open spaces left, sufficient to let the air in and the steam out. Grievously depressed by his want of success, he now had serious thoughts of giving up the thing altogether. Before abandoning it, however, the engine was once more thoroughly overhauled, many improvements introduced, and a new trial made of its powers. But this did not prove successful. "You cannot conceive," he wrote to a friend, "how mortified I am with this disappointment. It is a damned thing for a man to have his all hanging by a single string. If I had the wherewithal to pay the loss I don't think I should so much fear a failure, but I cannot bear the thought of other people becoming losers by my schemes.

I have the happy disposition of always painting the worst."

After his apparently fruitless labor he expressed his belief that of all things in life there is nothing more foolish than inventing. On the 31st of January, 1770, he writes,-"Today 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."

Although he felt that inventing leads only to vexation, failure, and increase of his terrible headaches, he could not stop his mental machinery. That was in complete working order, and he was contriving a dozen minor inventions, or "gim-cracks" as he called them, in as many various directions. He was equally ready to contrive a cure for smoky chimneys, a canal sluice for economizing water, a new method of readily measuring distances by means of a telescope, decomposing sea salt by lime and so obtaining alkali for purposes of commerce, making improvements in barometers, inventing a muffling furnace for melting metals, etc., etc. What a sad shame that a man of such ability should have been obliged to struggle so long for success and recognition. There was very little pecuniary return for all this, and his friend, Dr. Hutton of Edinburgh, addressed to him a New Year's letter, with the object of dissuading him from proceeding further with his unprofitable brain-distressing work. "A happy new year to you!" said Hut

and those who from pride chose to leave a legacy to the public It was no use, however, telling Watt that he must not invent. One might as well have told Burns that he was not to sing because it would not pay, or Wilkie that he was not to paint.

For thirty years his life was one long battle even when his engines succeeded he could not rest. In his fragile, nervous, dyspeptic state every increase of business was to him increase of brain-work and increase of pain, until it seemed as if not only his health, but the very foundations of his reason, must give way. When at last the sunshine of prosperity was beginning to dawn on him, his mind, worn out by care and over-work, could not look cheerfully at the future, and he writes in a strain of profound melancholy: "I have been effete and listless, neither daring to face business, nor capable of it; my head and memory failing me much; my stable of hobby-horses pulled down, and the horses given to the dogs for carrion. I have had serious thoughts of laying down the burden I find myself unable to carry, and perhaps, if other sentiments had not been stronger, should have thought of throwing off the mortal coil; but if matters do not grow worse, I may, perhaps, stagger on."

The uncommon neatness of the second Mrs. Watt must not be forgotten in enumerating the trials of her husband. He carried on the operations connected with his later inventions in his garret, a room under the kitchen roof, small, low, lighted by only one window, cold in winter, hot in summer. He was obliged occasionally to write to his partners that

he could not proceed further with his machine till the weather grew milder. Here he spent much of his time in the last years of his life. For days together he would confine himself there, not even descending to his meals, as he had provided himself with a frying-pan and Dutch oven, and cooked his own food.

Mrs. Watt, No. 2, was a thorough martinet in household affairs, and above all things detested "dirt." She taught her two pug dogs never to cross the hall without first wiping their feet on the mat. She hated the sight of her husband's leather apron and soiled hands, while he was engaged in his garret work; so he kept himself out of her sight at such times as much as possible. Some notion of the rigidity of her rule may be inferred from the fact of her having had a window made in the kitchen wall through which she could watch the servants, and observe how they were getting on with their work. Her passion for cleanliness was carried to a pitch which often fretted those about her by the restraints it imposed, but her husband gently submitted to her control. He was fond of a kind of snuff which Mrs. Watt detested, and she would seize and lock up the unoffending snuff-box whenever she could lay her hands on

it. A visitor in the family affirms that when she retired from the diningroom, if Mr. Watt did not follow at the time fixed by her, a servant entered and put out the light, even when a friend was present, on which the hen-pecked inventor would slowly rise and meekly say," We must go." He certainly can be ranked among the martyrs.