328 MEMOIR OF DANIEL TREADWELL. 



of which, he said in after life, he had gained more than from any one book he had 

 ever owned since. In the first years of his apprenticeship at Newburyport he also 

 fell upon an odd -volume or two of Pope, Milton's Poetical Works, several of Shake- 

 speare's plays, and the works of Sterne and Smollet, and a few other plays and 

 novels. On his removal to Boston, finding a good library, he began to read history 

 and the English poets from Spenser to Scott, whose "Marmion'' was just pub- 

 lished. He also studied physics and metaphysics. 

 In his Autobiography he says : 



" When about nineteen I took to geometry and algebra, and went unassisted through 

 Euclid and Bonnycastle's Algebra. Although I could not give my mind to the works of gold 

 and silver that I wrought, I was always attentive to the operations of machinery whenever 

 I saw them. Before I was fifteen I had gone through the necessary exercise of puzzling over 

 the problem of i perpetual motion.' During this labor I perceived, without aid or instruction 

 from any one, the great principle of virtual velocities. This rediscovery, or untaught percep- 

 tion, of the principle of virtual velocities is sometimes given as a mark of great mental 

 power. I am inclined to think it not an uncommon occurrence, and that most young persons 

 of a little more than medium talent are capable of it. Of the value of a clear, constant, and 

 vivid perception of the principle of virtual velocities to the machinist, too high an estimate 

 cannot be formed. In this way, working with my hands upon what did not interest my 

 thoughts, and bending my mind with its utmost force upon a world remote from my business, 

 I reached my majority." 



A friend writes of him : u He read everything good of its sort ; for everything 

 he found an appetite. Every evening and every moment when not at work he 

 spent over his books. His head was so full of Plutarch, and poetry, and the phi- 

 losophers, that he gave no time to the companionship of his acquaintance, and soon 

 came to live in a world that most of them had no conception of. Often the young 



workman was found hammering 



piece of plate, with his eyes perhaps wand 



ing from his work to a volume of Hume or some other instructive writer, which 

 was usually open upon the bench before him." About this time, as indicating the 

 kind of speculation in which he was indulging, and pardonable in a boy of his 

 turn of mind, he made for himself a gold watch-key, upon one side of which were 

 engraved "The Decalogue," "The Iliad," and "Macbeth," and upon the other, 

 " God," " Homer," and " Shakspere." 



Although he did not give himself to the mechanical work of his trade, it was 

 not so with regard to the principles which it involved, or the methods by which 

 it could be improved, especially its implements. In making silver- ware, the im- 



portant tool in Jesse Churchill's shop was the hammer, and much of the work- 

 man's success depended upon the skill with which he could use it. With this 



