Sellers.] ODZ [Feh. 19, 



Had Mr. Harrison i^resented to the world no other work but this his 

 life would have been justly classed among the benefactors of our race. 

 As it was, this invention was a crowning achievement of a life full of use- 

 fulness. 



Much of the detail of the machinery needed to produce these steam- 

 generators was perfected during the yeai's he was abroad, between 1860 

 and 1863, he returning to America in the summer of the latter year. 

 After his return he erected a factory for the production of his boiler, and 

 in the arrangement of this establishment he evinced mechanical ingenuity 

 of the highest order. He introduced many novelties in the methods of 

 founding ; in modes of cleaning the castings and in the general system of 

 proving the work when done. He aimed to so systematise the work as to 

 dispense with skilled labor as far as possible, using machinery in its 

 place. 



As Mr. Harrison had passed through the various conditions of life 

 as an apprentice, as journeyman, as foreman, and then as principal in 

 his career as a mechanic, and had achieved proficiency as a skilled work- 

 man before the days of modern machine-tool and labor-saving appliances, 

 he naturally believed such training to be the proper one for the youths of 

 our day, and in a measu.re deprecated the practice of keeping young 

 men too long at school if they looked toward success in the workshop . As 

 this was emphatically announced in public near the end of his useful life, 

 it may be well to give it more than mere mention. In the joui-ney of life 

 there are in the memory of all persons events which stand as landmarks 

 on the road ; certain points that appear prominently in view and are 

 remembered at all times in their proper order. In looking backward 

 along this road traveled but once, these important events are clearly seen, 

 no matter how long the road may have been, and the more distant ones 

 seem crowded in close proximity, the space between them having 

 been lost to view, so that the sum of life seems made up of the strongly 

 marked events only. If these events lead step by step towards affluence 

 and position, they must seem to the traveler on that road to have surely 

 marked it as the only path that could have led to such results. Mr. 

 Harrison saw in his early application to the workbench, in his early in- 

 dustry grown to habit, in his enforced eoonomy in boyhood, the founda- 

 tion of own his success. He prided himself on his skill as a workman, and 

 although he ceased to work with his hands when he took control of his 

 greater enterprises, yet he felt that in learning how to work he had stored 

 his mind with the knowledge of most use to him as a master-mechanic. 

 Hence we are not surprised to hear him advise the need of early appren- 

 ticeship to those who desire to become mechanics. His expression, "In 

 mechanical and other trades it is the education of the work shop and not 

 the education of schools, that is most required, " was prompted by the bias 

 of his own career, and was strengthened by observation of the course of 

 many others who, like him have, from rough beginnings, achieved distinc- 

 tion. His life, like the lives of those many others, was a long period of 



