120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he ascribed to it certain pains in his back from which he suf- 

 fered. 



He participated eagerly in physical sports, was expert in 

 Swedish gymnastics, was one of the best shots, the best leaper, 

 and the champion wrestler in his regiment, and was famed as an 

 athlete, skater, and swimmer. Mr. E. H. Stoughton, formerly 

 minister to Russia, is said to have surprised him once at sixty 

 years of age standing on his head, to prove that he had not lost 

 his agility. He was a man of unbounded benevolence, and never 

 refused the petitions of those who came to him in need. 



While his literary works were not numerous, Captain Ericsson 

 was a writer of force and ability, with imaginative faculties that 

 might have been developed under cultivation. In his youth, and 

 while engaged in his surveying work, he sometimes, he says, 

 " wrote poetry to the wonderful and enchanting midnight light of 

 Norrland. Connoisseurs often doubted that it came from the sec- 

 ond lieutenant and surveyor among the mountains." His com- 

 munications to the periodical press on the subjects in which he 

 was interested were clear and vigorous, and always acceptable. 



He was a man of intense patriotism, which he manifested 

 equally toward his native land, although he never returned to it, 

 and the United States, the country of his adoption. In his studies 

 and inventions he had always in view the protection of Sweden 

 against the aggressive stronger powers ; and he gave the fruits of 

 them ungrudgingly to the United States not always insisting 

 upon his reward as persistently as he had a right to do, and too 

 often not receiving it, or receiving it at the expense of delay and 

 trouble not creditable to our Government. His gifts to Swe- 

 den, after he became prosperous, were numerous and bountiful, 

 and included contributions for the relief of sufferers from fam- 

 ine and from a fire at Carlstad, and for a benevolent fund for 

 the aged miners and miners' widows of his native province ; a 

 subscription to the Royal Library of Stockholm ; the guns for the 

 first Swedish monitor ; and a gunboat for coast defense. In 1867 

 the miners of his native region erected in front of the house in 

 which he was born, at their own expense, a large granite monu- 

 ment, bearing the inscription, in Swedish, " John Ericsson was 

 born here in 1803." 



We are very largely indebted for the detail of the facts con- 

 cerning Captain Ericsson's inventions to the excellent biograph- 

 ical articles concerning him by Mr. William C. Church, which 

 were published in Scribner's Magazine in 1890. 



