Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/444

 man, with a wife whose beauty was unabated because it consisted, chiefly, in that love of heart to God and man which lends never-fading loveliness to the human countenance.

Awaiting them at home was a troop of little ones—the first home-instalment of a troop of lesser ones who accompanied the parent stems. All of these, besides being gifted with galvanic energy and flashing eyes, were impressed with the strong conviction, strange to say, that batteries, boilers, and submarine cables, were the most important things in the whole world, and the only subjects worth being played at by reasonable human children.