12 LETTER-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



him fifty dollars for the purchase of chemicals, so that 

 he might pursue his studies by himself. His invalid 

 mother, to emphasize her interest in his undertaking, 

 gave him, to melt up for reagents, her wedding tea- 

 spoons, old and thin and dented by the hard usage of 

 many children. Self-education in his own laboratory, 

 through unaided experimentation and the systematic 

 use of text-books, developed confidence and the habit 

 of independent logical thought. He learned to attain 

 the best possible methods of work by rejecting those 

 which on thorough testing did not give uniformly 

 certain results, and to eliminate all conclusions based 

 on assumption. 



This private laboratory had been lovingly furnished, 

 and his devotion to science was approved as an inter- 

 est, but the whole family felt that he should fit him- 

 self for some definite and recognized occupation. His 

 father, especially, unconvinced of the likelihood of a 

 professional future for his son in chemistry, wished 

 him to study for the practice of law or medicine. 

 Unwilling to abandon his own drearn of a purely 

 scientific life-work, Samuel Johnson, in the fall of 1848, 

 secured a position as instructor in the Flushing Insti- 

 tute at Flushing, Long Island, hoping to demonstrate 

 that he could support himself by teaching and at the 

 same time read and study along scientific lines. 



The letter of earliest date in the bundle which his 

 mother kept in her little red trunk is the following: 



Flushing Institute, Dec. 12, 1848. 



Dear Friends at Home I have come to a desperate con- 

 clusion to spoil the beauty of this sheet. I am about to 

 address a letter to everybody in particular and nobody in 



