ANECDOTE OF HIS -YOUTH. 357 



"During a journey to Glasgow, Mrs. Watt entrusted 

 her young son James to one of her friends. After a few 

 weeks she returned to see him, but most assuredly not 

 expecting the reception she met with. " Madam," said 

 her friend, as soon as she saw her, " you must hasten to 

 take James back to Greenock. I can no longer endure 

 the state of excitement into which he throws me ; I 

 am harrassed by want of sleep. Every night, when 

 the usual hour approaches for the family to retire to 

 bed, your son adroitly contrives to raise a discussion, 

 in the course of which he always finds means to intro- 

 duce a story ; this story is sure necessarily to engender 

 a second, and a third, &c. And these tales, whether 

 they be pathetic or comic, are so charming, so interest- 

 ing, that the whole of my family listen to them with, such 

 attention, that a fly might be heard to fly. Thus, hours 

 follow hours, without our being aware of it ; but the next 

 day I am ready to drop with fatigue. Dear madam, 

 take your son home." 



James Watt had a younger brother, John,* who, by 

 deciding to follow his father's profession, left James the 

 liberty of choosing any vocation ; for according to Scotch 

 customs, it suffices if one son adopts the paternal career. 

 But it was difficult to say what vocation this would be, 

 for the young student seemed to succeed equally well in 

 whatever he tried. 



The shores of Loch Lomond, already so celebrated by 

 the reminiscences that they afford of the historian Bu- 

 chanan, and of the illustrious inventor of Logarithms, 



biographies, and from which I myself, deceived by verbal references 

 too easily accepted, should otherwise have fallen into. 



* He was lost in 1762, in one of his father's ships, on her passage 

 from Greenock to America, aged twenty-three years. 



