delight. He was constantly trying to make models, even before he had
learned to read. He had from his own plans constructed a miniature
saw-mill prior to his tenth birthday, and made numerous drawings of
a complicated character. The graphic account of his youth and early
manhood which his biographer presents is full of suggestion and
instruction. The boy was too much occupied with his contrivances to
join in the pastimes of other children. His opportunities were
unusually stimulating. The project of the Goeta Canal Company, one of
the most formidable undertakings of its kind, was revived when he
was about ten years old, his father being appointed one of its
engineers, holding place next to that of the chief of the work. This
opened a new world of ideas, and the little fellow undertook all
manner of schemes. He was independent of outside assistance. Steel
tweezers, borrowed from his mother's dressing-case and ground to a
point, furnished him with a drawing pen, and his compasses were made
of birch-wood with needles inserted at the end of the legs. Later
on, he robbed his mother's sable cloak of the hairs required for two
small brushes, in order to complete his drawings in appropriate
colors. The clever lad attracted the notice of some of the greatest
mechanical draughtsmen in Sweden, who made him drawings to serve as
models, and taught him many of the principles of the art. Finally
the celebrated engineer, Count Platen, becoming interested,
appointed him a cadet in the corps of mechanical engineers; and such
was his progress in sketching profiles, maps, and drawings for the
archives of the canal company, that in 1816, at the age of thirteen,
he was made assistant leveller at the station of Riddarhagen. The
next year he was employed to set out the work for six hundred
operatives, though he was yet too small to reach the eye-piece of
his levelling instrument without the aid of a stool carried by an
attendant. Thus it will be seen that he was identified almost from
his cradle with great engineering works. His father died in 1818,
and in 1820, when seventeen, he entered the Swedish army as an
ensign and was rapidly promoted to a lieutenancy.

The skill of young Ericsson in topographical drawing was so marked
that he was soon summoned to the royal palace to draw maps to
illustrate the campaigns of the marshal of the empire. He also
passed with distinction a competitive examination for an appointment
on the survey of Northe