December 6, 1901,,] 



SCIENCE. 



873 



illustrated by experiments, not always free 

 from prospective danger. His spare change 

 was invested in copper wire and the like, 

 and his first five-dollar bill brought him, to 

 his infinite delight, a small galvanic battery. 

 The sheets of the New Yorh Observer, a 

 treasured family newspaper, he converted 

 into a huge hot-air balloon, which, to the 

 astonishment of his family and friends, 

 made a brilliant ascent and flight, coming 

 to rest, at last, and in flames, on the roof 

 of a neighboring house, and resulting in the 

 calling out of the entire fire department of 

 the town. When urged by his boy friends 

 to hide himself from the rather threatening 

 consequences of his first experiment in 

 aeronautics, he courageously marched him- 

 self to the place where his balloon had 

 fallen, saying, ' No 1 I will go and see what 

 damage I have done.' 



When a little more than sixteen years 

 old, in the spring of 1865, he was sent to 

 Phillips Academy at Andover, to be fitted 

 for entering the academic course at Yale. 

 His time there was given entirely to the 

 study of Latin and Greek, and he was in 

 every way out of harmony with his environ- 

 ment. He seems to have quickly and 

 thoroughly appreciated this fact, and his 

 very first letter from Andover is a cry for 

 relief. * Oh, take me home /' is the boyish 

 scrawl covering the last page of that letter, 

 on another of which he says, ' It is simply 

 horrible ; I can never get on here.' It was 

 not that he could not learn Latin and 

 Greek if he was so minded, but that he had 

 long ago become wholly absorbed in the 

 love of nature and in the study of nature's 

 laws, and the whole situation was to his 

 ambitious spirit most artificial and irksome. 

 Time did not soften his feelings or lessen 

 his desire to escape from such uncongenial 

 surroundings, and, at his own request. Dr. 

 Farrand, principal of the academy at New 

 Jersey, to which city the family had recently 

 removed, was consulted as to what ought to 



be done. Fortunately for everybody', his 

 advice was that the boy ought to be allowed 

 to follow his bent, and, at his own sugges- 

 tion, he was sent, in the autumn of that 

 year, to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti- 

 tute at Troy, where he remained five years, 

 and from which he was graduated as a civil 

 engineer in 1870. 



It is unnecessary to say that this change 

 was joyfully welcomed by young Rowland. 

 At Andover the only opportunity that had 

 ofiered for the exercise of his skill as a 

 mechanic was in the construction of a some- 

 what complicated device by means of which 

 he outwitted some of his schoolmates in an 

 early attempt to haze him, and in this he 

 took no little pride. At Troy he gave loose 

 rein to his ardent desires, and his career in 

 science may almost be said to begin with 

 his entrance upon his work there and be- 

 fore he was seventeen years old. 



He made immediate use of the opportuni- 

 ties afforded in Troy and its neighborhood 

 for the examination of machinery and 

 manufacturing processes, and one of his 

 earliest letters to his friends contained a 

 clear and detailed description of the opera- 

 tion of making railroad iron, the rolls, 

 shears, saws and other special machines 

 being represented in uncommonly well 

 executed pen drawings. One can easily 

 see in this letter a fall confirmation of a 

 statement that he occasionally made later 

 in life, namely, that he had never seen a 

 machine, however complicated it might be, 

 whose working he could not at once com- 

 prehend. In another letter, written within 

 a few weeks of his arrival in Troy, he 

 shows in a remarkable way his power of 

 going to the root of things which even 

 at that early age was sufficiently in evi- 

 dence to mark him for future distinction as 

 a natural philosopher. On the river he saw 

 two boats equipped with steam pumps, 

 engaged in trying to raise a half- sunken 

 canal boat by pumping the water out of it. 



