Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/561

Rh nine years old the family removed to Louisville. The engine on board the boat excited so much admiration and wonder that the engineer was induced to explain to him the principal parts of the machine. So well did the lad profit by this one lesson in steam-engineering that in little more than two years after he constructed a miniature engine which was worked by steam. When about ten years old, his father fitted for him a small workshop, and there he constructed models of saw-mills, fire-engines, steamboats, steam-engines, electrical and other machines. One of the pastimes of his childhood was to take in pieces and put together again the family clock, and at twelve years he was able to do the same with a patent-lever watch, with no tools but his pocket-knife. When thirteen, misfortune overtook his father, and he had to withdraw from school and work his own way. His parents went to St. Louis in 1833 and he went with them. The steamer was burned in the night on the way there, and he landed barefooted and coatless, on the very spot now covered by the abutment of the great steel bridge which he designed and built. The only opening in the way of business that offered was to sell apples on the street, and by this means, for a few months, he sustained himself and assisted in supporting his mother and sisters. In time he obtained a situation with a mercantile firm, where he remained for five years. One of the heads of the house having an excellent library, gave him access to it, and he used his opportunity well to study subjects bearing upon mechanics, machinery, civil engineering, and physical science. In 1839 he obtained employment as a clerk or purser on a Mississippi River steamer. He again made the best use of his opportunity to acquire that complete knowledge of the great river which he was afterward able to turn to such good account in the noble enterprises he so fortunately carried into effect. In 1842 he constructed a diving-bell boat to recover the cargoes of sunken steamers. This was followed with a boat of larger tonnage, provided with machinery for pumping out the sand and water and lifting the entire hull and cargo of the vessel. A company was formed to operate this device, and it soon had a business that covered the entire Mississippi River, from Balize to Galena, and even branched into some of its tributaries. By his methods, a great many valuable steamers were set afloat and restored to usefulness which it would not previously have been possible to save, as they would have been buried very soon beneath the river-sands. It was while engaged in this business that he gained a thorough knowledge of the laws which control the flow of silt-bearing rivers, and of the Mississippi he was able to say years afterward that there was not a stretch in its bed fifty miles long, between St. Louis and New Orleans, in which he had not stood upon the bottom of the stream beneath the shelter of the diving-bell.

In 1845 he sold out his interest in this company and established in St. Louis the first manufactory of glass-ware west of the Ohio River.