146 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF JOSEPH HEXEY. 



the higliest interest; fixed my mind on the study of nature, and caused 

 me to resolve at the time of reading it that I would immediately com- 

 mence to devote my life to the acquisition of knowledge." 



The pursuit of elementary knowledge under difficulties and priva- 

 tions now commenced. At first he attended a night-school, where he 

 soon learned all the master could teach. At length he entered Albany 

 Academy, earning the means at one time by teaching a country district 

 school, later by serving as tutor to the sons of Gen. Stephen Van Eens- 

 selaer the patroon. Then he took the direction of a road-survey across 

 the southern portion of the State, from West Point to Lake Erie, earn- 

 ing a little monej' and much credit. He returned to Albany Academy 

 as an assistant teacher, but was very soon, in 1828, appointed professor 

 of mathematics. He had already chosen his field, and began to make 

 physical investigations. 



It is worth noticing that just when Henry's youthful resolution to 

 devote his life to the acquisition of knowledge was ready to bear fruit, 

 another resohe was made, in England, by another scientific investiga- 

 tor, James Smithson, in his will, executed in October, 1828, wherein he 

 devoted his patrimony "to found at Washington an establishment 



FOR the increase AND DIFFUSION OF KNOW^LEDGE AMONG 3IEN." 



Who could have thought that the jioor lad, who resolved to seek for 

 knowledge as for hid treasure, and the rich man of noble lineage, who 

 resolved that his treasure should increase and diliLise knowledge, would 

 ever stand in this interesting relation; that the one would direct and 

 shape the establishment which the other willed to be founded ! 



The young professor's position was an honorable but most laborious 

 one. Although Albany Academy was said by the distinguished presi- 

 dent of Union College in those days to be " a college in disguise," it 

 began its work low down. Its new i)rofessor of mathematics had to 

 teach seven hours of every day, and for half of this time to drudge with 

 a large class of boys in the elements of arithmetic. But he somehow 

 found time to carry on systematically the electro-magnetic researches 

 which he had already begun. In the very year of his appointment, 

 1828, he described in the Transactions of the Albany Institute a new 

 application of the galvanic multiplier, and throughout that year and the 

 next he carried on those investigations which, when published at the 

 beginning of the ensuing year, January, 1831, in that notable first 

 paper in the American Journal of Science and the Arts, at once brought 

 Henry's name to the front line among the discoverers in electro-mag- 

 netism. 



