120 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



a store kept by a Mr. Broderick, and spent part of the day in 

 business duties and part at school. This position he kept until 

 the age of fifteen. During these early years his intellectual qual- 

 ities were fully displayed, but in a direction totally different from 

 that which they ultimately took. He was slender in person, not 

 /V vigorous in health, with almost the delicate complexion and fea- 



tures of a girl. His favorite reading was not that of his school- 

 books, nor did it indicate the future field of his activities. His 

 great delight was books of romance. The lounging place of the 

 'young villagers of an evening was around the stove in Mr. Brod- 

 erick's store. Here young Henry, although the slenderest of the 

 group, was the central figure, retailing to those around him the 

 stories which he had read, or which his imagination had suggested. 

 He was of a highly imaginative turn of mind, and seemed to live 

 t in the ideal world of fairies. 



At the age of fifteen he returned to Albany, and, urged by his 

 imaginative taste, joined a private dramatic company, of which he 

 soon became the leading spirit. There was every prospect of his 

 devoting himself to the stage when, at the age of sixteen, accident 

 turned his mental activities into an entirely different direction. 

 ^Being detained indoors by a slight indisposition, a friend loaned 

 him a copy of Dr. Gregory's lectures on Experimental Philos- 

 ophy r Asfronop^ji^ ^hp^isfry. htelbecame intensely interested 

 in the field of thought which this work opened to him. Here in 

 the domain of nature were subjects of investigation more worthy 

 of attention than anything in the ideal world in which his imagi- 

 nation had hitherto roamed. He felt that there was an imagina- 

 tion of the intellectual faculties as well as of the emotions and that 

 the search after truth was even more attractive than the erection 

 of fairy palaces. He determined to make the knowledge of the 

 newly opened domain the great object of his life, without attempt- 

 ing to confine himself to any narrow sphere. Mr. Boyd, noticing 

 his great interest in the book, presented it to him; and it formed 

 one of his cherished possessions as long as he lived. His appre- 

 ciation of it was expressed in the following memorandum written 

 upon the inside of the cover: 



