1887 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUBE. 



731 



MK. THOMAS 'WILLIAM COWAN. 



A B'EW WORDS IN HEOAKD TO HIS IlECENT VISIT. 



TT seems to me no more than fitting that 

 M we should take a little space to speak of 

 W one of the greatest of living bee-keep- 

 "*■ ers. I do not mean by this that Mr. 

 Cowan has the largest apiary in the 

 world, for. in fact. I do not know how many 

 colonies of bees he does keep. Furthermore, 

 I do not know that he has ever made any 

 money by following the pursuit of bee cul- 

 ture. It sounds a little strange, does it 

 not, friends, to speak of it in this way V 

 Well, the fact is, friend Cowan gave me a 

 new glimpse of life; that is. he gave me a 

 glimpse of the life of a human being who 

 IS not working as we Americans do, too 

 many of us, simply to pile up dollars. I 

 presume likely he is wealthy; but he did 

 not tell me how much he is worth, and I did 

 not feel like asking him. In fact, since I 

 have been thinking of it, in our country we 

 place altogether too much stress on the 

 amount of property a man has laid up. In 

 my Sunday-schoolclass of growing boys a 

 short time ago, the subject turned on wealth; 

 and almost all of the boys, directly or indi- 

 rectly, declared that money is the main 

 thing. In trying to give them a glimpse of 

 something better, I asked them now much 

 they knew of Vanderbilt. They had heard 

 his name mentioned, but not one of them 

 could tell me much about him. I don't 

 think that ouf^ of them knew whether Mr. 

 Vanderbilt was dead or alive. They only 

 knew that he had had the credit of being 

 worth millions. Several years ago, while 

 away from home, a locomotive and train of 

 cars stopped at the station where I was 

 standing. There was something so unusual 

 about it that I inquired of a bystander what 

 it all meant. He said it was Vanderbilt's 

 traveling escort. He owned the cars and he 

 owned the locomotive. We did not get a 

 glimpse of the millionaire, but we did see 

 his servants and waiting-men. IVieif were 

 fixed up enough to satisfy us, without oret- 

 ting a sight of the great man himself. Per- 

 haps you wonder if a great crowd gathered. 

 I don't believe that half a dozen people 

 crossed the street; and although the train 

 was evidently intended to impress the world 

 on whatever road it ran. it did not seem to 

 have succeeded at all. Nobody cared par- 

 ticularly about Vanderbilt ; and the sight of 

 this spectacle, indicating his princely wealth, 

 gave me but a feeling of pain. I remember 

 a gathering at a railroad station a few years 

 after this. The gathering was to get a 

 glimpse of Garfield. People came for miles 

 around, and a great crowd surrounded the 

 end of the car where lie spoke to them dur- 

 ring the brief interval the train stopped. 

 The people fiocked to see him, and to take 

 him by the hand, as many as could, because 

 he had risen from obscurity — yes. from being 

 a canal-boy, by his own efforts and industry. 

 Garfield was never worth very much money, 

 I believe ; but he won the love and esteem 

 and respect of almost the whole world, be- 

 cause his life was given for the good of the 

 people. 

 Well, in that two-days' visit with brother 



Cowan I did not hear any thing said about 

 great chances of making money, nor any 

 discussions whether this, that, or the other 

 would wa//. It is sometimes said, that rich- 

 es tend to discourage energy and industry. 

 It has not been so in this case. Friend 

 Cowan must have been all his life a most 

 energetic and determined worker. I don't 

 know how many people he employs, but 1 

 feel sure he might employ a great many if he 

 chose. But the work I speak of is the work 

 of his own hand and his own brain. When 

 I met him at the train 1 offered to carry a 

 part of his luggage, and I took hold of a nice 

 square box that I thought would be just 

 about what I should like to carry. I very 

 soon, however, passed it over to Ernest. 

 Had the box l)een filled with iron wedges, I 

 should not have been more astonished. Pret- 

 ty soon it transpired that this was his mi- 

 croscope. You know, friends, I have for 

 many years worked in metals. I know pret- 

 ty nearly how many years of patient, earnest 

 toil it takes to make a fine mechanic, and 

 therefore^;! was prepared to be surprised 

 when Mrs. Cowan remarked that the micro- 

 scope was'the work of his own hands. The 

 more I examined the instrument, the more 

 astonished I became. People often say, in 

 looking at home-made work like this, that it 

 is wonderfully well done for hand-mh-k; but 

 this piece of machinery was the best work I 

 ever saw in my life, of any kind. I mentally 

 figured up the amount of machinery requir- 

 ed for the different operations needed, and a 

 little conversation satisfied me that he was 

 expert in the use of the lathe and other me- 

 chanical tools. Those who use microscopes 

 have doubtless discovered how necessary it 

 is that every part of the machine should 

 move freely, but, at the same time, should 

 never move so easily as to move of its own 

 accord. It never occurred to me, until I 

 saw friend Cowan"s instrument, that a de- 

 vice could l)e made to allow these heavy 

 parts not only to move just right, but keep 

 moving just right. Not only is every por- 

 tion of the instrument adjustable in every 

 direction, but the friction with which the 

 parts move is also adjustable ; and at any 

 time any part can be made to work a little 

 tighter or a little looser, by a slight turning 

 of minute screws. A great many times I 

 have felt impatient because of the length of 

 time it takes to accomplish any thing with 

 the microscope, or to exhibit it to friends. 

 Now, although this instrument is remark- 

 ably strong and heavy, our friend handles it 

 with greater rapidity and accuracy than 1 

 ever saw any^thing in the line of optical in- 

 struments handled before. 



Mr. Cowan 'was not only the most thor- 

 oughly versed man I have ever met or heard 

 of in every thing pertaining to bee culture, 

 but he was equally at home in the depart- 

 ment of mechanics. At different periods of 

 his life he'has worked at or worked out most 

 of the well-known mechanical problems. I 

 was pleased to hear him tell us about work- 

 ing on perpetual motion, to be run by mag- 

 netism. He has made an electric clock, and 

 one that performed well, too, which is more 

 than can be said of the one that I made 

 some years ago. He knew what is possible 



