Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/148

 312 WORKMEN AND HEROES if the remains of Captain John Ericsson should be conveyed to his native coun- try upon a United States man-of-war ; and arrangements having been completed, the Baltimore was assigned to the service. In committing the illustrious dead to the care of the commander of the Baltimore, Mr. George H. Robinson said : "We send him back crowned with honor, proud of the life of fifty years he de- voted to this nation, and with gratitude for his gifts to us." John Ericsson's birthplace in Sweden is marked by a large granite monument erected in 1867. His father was a mining proprietor, and his mother an ener- getic, intellectual, and high-spirited woman. His brother, Nils, one year older than himself, was trained as an engineer, became chief of the construction of the system of government railways in Sweden, was created a baron, and retired in 1862 with a pension larger than any before bestowed upon a Swedish subject. His sister Caroline, born in 1800, was a girl of unusual beauty. As a boy John was the wonder of the neighborhood. The machinery at the mines was to him an endless source of curiosity and delight. He was constantly trying to make models, even before he had learned to read. He had from his own plans con- structed a miniature saw-mill prior to his tenth birthday, and made numerous drawings of a complicated character. The graphic account of his youth and early manhood which his biographer presents is full of suggestion and instruction. The boy was too much occupied with his contrivances to join in the pastimes of other children. His opportunities were unusually stimulating. The project of the Gota Canal Company, one of the most formidable undertakings of its kind, was revived when he was about ten years old, his father being appointed one of its engineers, holding place next to that of the chief of the work. This opened a new world of ideas, and the little fellow undertook all manner of schemes. He was independent of outside assistance. Steel tweezers, borrowed from his moth- er's dressing-case and ground to a point, furnished him with a drawing pen, and his compasses were made of birch-wood with needles inserted at the end of the legs. Later on, he robbed his mother's sable cloak of the hairs required for two small brushes, in order to complete his drawings in appropriate colors. The clever lad attracted the notice of some of the greatest mechanical draughtsmen in Sweden, who made him drawings to serve as models, and taught him many of the principles of the art. Finally the celebrated engineer, Count Platen, becom- ing interested, appointed him a cadet in the corps of mechanical engineers ; and such was his progress in sketching profiles, maps, and drawings for the archives of the canal company, that in 18 16, at the age of thirteen, he was made assistant leveller at the station of Riddarhagen. The next year he was employed to set out the work for six hundred operatives, though he was yet too small to reach the eye-piece of his levelling instrument without the aid of a stool carried by an attendant. Thus it will be seen that he was identified almost from his cra- dle with great engineering works. His father died in 1818, and in 1820, when seventeen, he entered the Swedish army as an ensign and was rapidly promoted to a lieutenancy. The skill of young Ericsson in topographical drawing was so marked that he