278 JOSEPH HENRY, LL.D. 



ial events, yet nothing is trivial that influences a 

 human being, Garfield said, " To every man of 

 great original power there comes, in early youth, 

 a moment of sudden discovery of self-recogni- 

 tion when his own nature is revealed to himself, 

 when he catches for the first time a strain of that 

 immortal song to which his own spirit answers, 

 and which becomes thenceforth and forever the 

 inspiration of his life. 



" ' Like noble music unto noble words.' " 



That "moment of sudden discovery" came to 

 Henry at sixteen. A slight accident had confined 

 him to his mother's house for a few days. A 

 young Scotch gentleman, Robert Boyle, who was 

 boarding with her, had left upon the table of his 

 chamber an unostentatious book, "Lectures on 

 Experimental Philosophy, Astronomy, and Chem- 

 istry : by G. Gregory, D.D., Vicar of Westham." 



The book begins by asking several questions : 

 " 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 it stop at 

 a certain distance, and then return to you ? . . . 

 On the contrary, why does flame or smoke always 

 mount upward, though no force is used to send 

 them in that direction ? And why should not the 

 flame of a candle drop toward the floor when you 

 reverse it, or hold it downward, instead of turning 

 up and ascending into the air ? . . . Again, you 

 look into a clear well of water, and see your own 



