Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/408

394 the difference between this precipitate and that other. Do you think that you ever will be a chemist, sir? An illusion, sir, an illusion, a sad one; waste of time and your father's money; better take a course in theology or judicial jurisprudence." Well, many such an illustration may be real to-day also. It is true we have gone a step further since; we have now in most of the colleges that respect themselves physical laboratories, generally well mounted; here instruction is received and practice is obtained in scales, dimensions, standard units, etc. But what would have been a heaven for the twelve or thirteen years old boy becomes only too often the place of torture for the nineteen, twenty, or twenty-one years old young man; unsuccessful in his attempts, clumsy because not trained beforehand, he often wishes the whole recitation to forgetfulness; and a large number of students remain afterward mere designers in technical offices or poor lecturers on the so-called popular sciences, instead of following a successful scientific career, doing original work, and possibly realizing discoveries, improvements, wealth, and honor. The many failures here ought to serve as an emphatically practical lesson on the necessity of adapting work to age.

When the young man enters the laboratory at college, he ought not to encounter any mechanical difficulties. His attention ought to be chiefly directed to more abstract thoughts, to his theories, his laws, etc. Expert with his fingers, his senses trained, he ought to be able to note differences and similarities in the experimental phenomena, formulate his hypotheses about them, and verify them. Very recently the writer had a good chance of seeing the above practically illustrated. The son of one of our leading citizens, entering his second year in Princeton, who had just the training (tool-house work) recommended, was present at the recitation in physics; a fine apparatus was brought in and the professor had some trouble in explaining to the class the working of the micrometer-screws in the apparatus—in other words, the way the principle of the micrometer-screws is practically applied. The writer's acquaintance, handling the screw in his turn, suggested to the professor the possibility of doubling the delicacy of the scale by letting in another screw within the first, a suggestion that was willingly accepted, and as far as he knows executed. The older young man wants as the basis of enthusiastic exertion, a higher generally practical purpose than merely the routine of manipulation, or the preceding wood and metal work found in some colleges; besides, he hardly has any time for it; of course, he submits, but generally, in direct ratio to his intellectual development, he gets disgusted with the practical drudgery. At that age there is a restlessness of mind, a flight of imagination, an elasticity of thought, that can and ought to be utilized more