206 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



experimentation, logical precision in deduction, perseverance in 

 exploration, sagacity in interpretation. * 



EARLY CAREER. 



Of Henry's early struggles, of the youthful traits which might 

 afford us clue to his manhood's character and successes, we have but 

 little preserved for the future biographer. Deprived of his father 

 at an early age, he was the sole care and the sole comfort of his 

 widowed mother. Carefully nurtured in the stringent principles of 

 a devout religious faith, he adhered through life to the traditions 

 and to the convictions derived from his honorable Scottish ancestry. 



At the age of about seven years, (his mother having been induced 

 to part with him for a time,) he was sent by his uncle to attend 

 the district school at Galway, in Saratoga county, N. Y., at a distance 

 of 36 miles from Albany, his native city. He remained under the 

 care of his grandmother in this village for several years, until the 

 death of his uncle; when he returned to his mother at Albany. 



As a youth he was by no means precocious, as seldom have been 

 those who have left a permanent influence on their kind. He seems 

 to have felt no fondness for his early schools, and to have shown no 

 special aptitude for the instructions they afforded. Like many 

 another unpromising lad, he followed pretty much his own devices, 

 unconcerned as to the development of his latent capabilities. The 

 books he craved were not the books his school-teachers set before 

 him. The novel and the play interested and absorbed the active 

 fancy naturally so exuberant in youth ; and the indications from his 

 impulsive temperament and dreamy imaginative spirit were that he 

 would probably become an actor a dramatist or a poet. 



He was however from his childhood's years a close observer 

 both of nature and of the peculiarities of his fellows : and one char- 



* HENRY'S tribute to Peltier, seems peculiarly applicable to himself. "He pos- 

 sessed in an eminent degree the mental characteristics necessary for a successful 

 scientific discoverer; an imagination always active in suggesting hypotheses for the 

 explanation of the phenomena under investigation, and a logical faculty never at 

 fault in deducing consequences from the suggestions best calculated to bring them 

 to the test of experience; an invention ever fertile in devising apparatus and other 

 means by which the test could be applied; and finally a moral constitution which 

 sought only the discovery of truth, and could alone be satisfied with its attainment." 

 (Smithsonian Report for 1867, p. 158.) 



