690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Catherine can not go, but sends her moaning there " ; and the child 

 would cease to fret. 



The Vilas play a subordinate part in many other stories, and 

 occasionally appear mixed up with religious ideas in such a way 

 that a course of comparative studies would be necessary to make 

 them clear. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from 

 Das Ausland, 



•»*♦» 



SKETCH OF THOMAS CORWIN MENDENHALL. 



By GEOEGE 1LES. 



AMERICA is rich in men who have proved how much more 

 decisive in a career of usefulness is nature than nurture, 

 the instinct for acquiring knowledge than facilities for instruc- 

 tion, a worthy ambition to render service to one's fellows than all 

 the means and agencies which wait upon circumstances ordinarily 

 and often ignorantly called favorable. Such a man is the subject 

 of this sketch. 



Thomas Corwin Mendenhall was born on October 4, 1841, 

 near Hanoverton, Ohio. On his father's side he is of Quaker 

 stock, tracing his descent from Benjamin Mendenhall, who emi- 

 grated from Wiltshire, England, with William Penn, and settled 

 in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Young Mendenhall's school- 

 ing was of the scanty kind afforded by small country villages 

 more than a generation ago ; defective though it was, it developed 

 in him at an early age a fondness for the study of mathematics 

 and the natural sciences. He gradually won for himself an edu- 

 cation which his opportunities would have denied to a less sturdy 

 spirit. 



Among the most important influences working for his mental 

 development in boyhood was the encouragement of his father, who, 

 while he had enjoyed only limited opportunities for educational 

 training, was an earnest, thoughtful man, and fond of reading. 

 From him, along with the conviction that there must be an ante- 

 cedent cause for every effect, he derived a disposition to investigate 

 causes and inquire after reasons. ' Another impulse, which must 

 have had a very considerable effect upon the determination of his 

 future career, was given him by one of his teachers in the old log 

 school-house — a good Quaker lady, who had a way of setting her 

 pupils to making simple experiments, and thus, as he has said to 

 us, directed the first physical laboratory that he ever entered. 

 She taught him that a ray of light was bent in passing from one 

 medium to another of different density, by means of the- old and 

 familiar experiment with the coin and tin cup. On another occa- 

 sion, by darkening the windows, except for a small opening in the 



