ANDREAS KURTZ 149 



It is much to be regretted that so little is 

 known of his life from his thirteenth to his 

 thirty-third year. We know nothing of his 

 occupations, his studies, his companions, 

 his methods of self-culture, or the develop- 

 ment of his character; but we know something 

 of the time in which he lived, and the 

 circumstances by which he was surrounded, 

 we have further been able to see how the 

 friendless child fought his way up in a 

 foreign land, how he availed himself of his 

 opportunities and made his mark, how he 

 laid in stores of knowledge, and became an 

 expert manipulator, so that in later days he 

 was able to found and to carry on, with 

 considerable success, many operations con- 

 nected with various manufactures, and to lay 

 the foundations of a great and permanent 

 business. He does not appear to us, to have 

 been a man fertile in theories, nor to have 

 given his mind to work out ingenious ideas 

 or conceptions, in fact, there is a notable 

 absence in his memoranda of everything that 

 is essentially theoretical, he never used 

 symbols or alludes to equivalents or atomic 

 weights ; his days were spent in patient 

 investigation, experiment and research, and 

 in this practical work he was exact, methodical, 



