ADDRESS OF PROF. A. GRAY. 55 



said was the first book he ever opened voluntarily, and to all the 

 works of fiction which the library contained. Access in the regular 

 way was soon granted to him. 



The lad at this time was a clerk, or office-boy, in the store of a 

 Mr. BRODERICK. He returned to Albany at the age of fourteen 

 or fifteen. We may count it as a part of his education that he there 

 served a brief apprenticeship to a silversmith, in which he acquired 

 the manual dexterity afterward so useful to him. Opportunely 

 perhaps, the silversmith soon failed in business, and young HENRY 

 was thrown out of employment. His powers were now developing, 

 but not in the line they were soon to take. To romance reading 

 was now joined a fondness for the theater. Not content with seeing 

 all the plays he could, he found his way behind the scenes, and 

 learned the methods of producing stage effects. He joined a juve- 

 nile forensic and theatrical society, called the Rostrum, and soon 

 distinguished himself in it by his ingenuity in stage arrangements. 

 He was made president, and having nothing else to do at the time, 

 he gave his whole attention to the Eostrum. He dramatized a tale, 

 wrote a comedy, and took a part in its representation. Unusually 

 comely in form and features, and of prepossessing address, our 

 future philosopher was in a fair way to become an actor, perhaps a 

 distinguished one. 



But now a slight illness confined him for a few days to his mother's 

 house. To while away the hours he took up a small book which a 

 Scotchman, who then occupied a room in the house, had left upon 

 his mother's table. It was "Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, 

 Astronomy, and Chemistry, intended chiefly for the use of young 

 persons, by G. Gregory," an English clergyman. It is an unpre- 

 tending volume, but a sensible one. It begins by asking three or 

 four questions, such as these : 



"You throw a stone, or shoot an arrow into the air; why does it 

 not go forward in the line or direction that you give it? Why does 



