Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/854

832 has a fine literary flavor about it, and suggests either Shelley or the reputed author of Aytoun's "Firmilian," according to the taste and fancy of the reader, had been sent, as the heir of the house, to Cambridge, and having there acquired the habit of literature, took to journalism and other reprehensible pursuits, and sank at last into a confirmed scribbler. The world at large always said that Percy was a very clever fellow, while that man James had absolutely nothing at all in him. His entire interest was absorbed in the tea-trade. We who knew them both well, however, could clearly discern that the mere difference of position and education masked in James the very characteristics that were plainly developed and abnormally nurtured in his brother Percy. And Percy often said to me in confidence, after eleven o'clock at night, as we sat together over our glass of whisky-toddy, "If James had only been sent to Cambridge, he'd have been a deal cleverer fellow than I am." It may have been rude of me, but I always agreed myself with Percy.—Cornhill Magazine.



AVID AMES WELLS has long been the representative economist of the United States, and a thinker whose vast information, fearlessness, and thoroughly judicial mind, have won him fame among economists the world over. He has proved his ability and sagacity in the successful management of large business interests. While most economic teachers have been confined to class-room and text-book, it has been his exceptional good fortune to practically apply his science to the reform of fiscal errors. Since vacating his high office under the Federal Government, he has exerted wide and growing influence upon the legislators of the nation.

Mr. Wells was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, June 17, 1828, and is a lineal descendant on the father's side of Thomas Welles, Governor of the Colony of Connecticut, 1655-1658, and on the mother's side of David Ames, who, under Washington, built and established the National Armory at Springfield. He and his brother Oliver were the founders and progenitors of the well-known manufacturing and railroad-building family of Massachusetts. After graduuatinggraduating [sic] at Williams College in 1847, and writing and publishing his first book, entitled "Sketches of Williams College" David Ames Wells was for a time (1848) an assistant editor with the late Samuel Bowles of the Springfield "Republican." While thus employed, Mr. Wells suggested the idea, and was associated in the invention, of folding newspapers and books by machinery in connection with power printing-presses; and the first machine ever constructed and 