e, and he could thus have many spare minutes to study the
precious book, which he propped up against the chimney. He was a great
miser of spare moments and used every one as though he might never see
another. He devoted his leisure hours for five years to that wonderful
production, "The Forge," copies of which are to be seen in many a home.

What chance had Galileo to win renown in physics or astronomy, when his
parents compelled him to go to a medical school? Yet while Venice
slept, he stood in the tower of St. Mark's Cathedral and discovered the
satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, through a telescope made
with his own hands. When compelled on bended knee to publicly renounce
his heretical doctrine that the earth moves around the sun, all the
terrors of the Inquisition could not keep this feeble man of threescore
years and ten from muttering to himself, "Yet it does move." When
thrown into prison, so great was his eagerness for scientific research
that he proved by a straws in his cell that a hollow tube is relatively
much stronger than a solid rod of the same size. Even when totally
blind, he kept constantly at work.

Imagine the surprise of the Royal Society of England when the poor
unknown Herschel sent in the report of his discovery of the star
Georgium Sidus, its orbit and rate of motion; and of the rings and
satellites of Saturn. The boy with no chance, who had played the oboe
for his meals, had with his own hands made the telescope through which
he discovered facts unknown to the best-equipped astronomers of his
day. He had ground two hundred specula before he could get one perfect.

George Stephenson was one of eight children whose parents were so poor
that all lived in a single room. George had to watch cows for a
neighbor, but he managed to get time to make engines of clay, with
hemlock sticks for pipes. At seventeen he had charge of an engine,
with his father for fireman. He could neither read nor write, but the
engine was his teacher, and he a faithful student. While the other
hands were playing games or loafing in liquor shops during the
holidays, George was taking his machine to pieces, cleaning it,
studying it, and making experiments in engines. When he had become
famous as a great inventor of improvements in engines, those who had
loafed and played called him lucky.

Without a charm of face or figure, Charlotte Cushman resolved to place
herself in the front rank as an actress,