Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/407

Rh been seen standing for hours before that mysterious automaton, a steam-engine, his little body unconsciously following the motion of the fly-wheel, his eyes fixed intensely upon the valves or gears. On inquiry he may have given you satisfactory explanations about the working of the engine, describing minutely its parts and the way they are put together, information that he had acquired incidentally and all by himself; and yet the same boy, after a year or so in the school, would have often been pronounced a dunce by his learned teacher, and specially without any love for natural sciences. Why? Simply on account of his inability to recite correctly the generally incorrect definitions. Many a bright school companion of the writer, having in him all the material wanted to make a splendid technical student or scientist, became a classical literary nobody on account of the definitions. Then, again, what a horrible crime, was it not, to have dirty and lacerated fingers, resulting from some little galvanoplastics or the like! "So ungentlemanly" was another time-honored intellectual obstruction. It may have saved a few dollars' worth of clothes, and even taught some so-called respectability to the boy, but it killed many a good brain.

Gradually, nevertheless, things began to change; actual experiments began to accompany the horrid book of definitions. It is true the teacher, himself generally a very inefficient practical worker, kept all the apparatus locked up, and only on extra occasions was the glass closet opened; but then, what a joy! what an interest! what a number of never-ending questions! When of a sudden down came the marks for noise, disrespect toward the teacher, speaking without permission, and so on. The presence, however, of the apparatus, even behind the glass doors of the closet, strongly contributed to the general interest in the matter. How eagerly did we not study our abhorred definitions and work for good marks, so as to have the privilege of taking out the apparatus from the closet!

In college the collection was more complete, and you had even the right to touch the apparatus, although the teacher alone performed the experiments. Soon, however, came the greatest and the most charming of innovations, laboratory experimental work, and finally regular laboratory instruction, when of a sudden—eyes did not see, nose refused to smell, in chemistry; fingers were found clumsy and the dimensions badly guessed at in physics. Broken glass without end, cut fingers innumerable, miserable experience with the apparatus, that generally refused to work, discouraged many a scholar, especially if the not always good humored professor or his assistant repeatedly pronounced the melancholy decree: "You will never accomplish anything, Mr. So-and-so. You can not see, you do not smell, you do not