far beyond the rest of
mankind that they form a class by themselves: Benjamin Franklin and
Thomas A. Edison.

Franklin wore a seven and a half hat; Edison wears a seven and
three-fourths.

The difference in men is the difference in brain-power. And while size
does not always token quality, yet size and surface are necessary to get
power, and there is no record of a man with a six and a half head ever
making a ripple on the intellectual sea. Without the cells you get no
mind, and if mind exists without the cells, it has not yet been proven.
The brain is a storage-battery made up of millions of minute cells.

The weight of an average man's brain is forty-nine ounces. Now,
Humboldt's brain weighed fifty-six ounces, and Newton's and Franklin's
weighed fifty-seven. Let us hope the autopsist will not have a chance to
weigh Edison's brain for many years, but when he does the mark will
register fifty-seven ounces.

An orang-utan weighs about the same as a man, but its brain weighs only a
pound, against three pounds for a man. Give a gorilla a brain weighing
fifty ounces, and he would be a Methodist Presiding Elder. Give him a
brain the same size of Edison's, say fifty-seven ounces, and instead of
spending life in hunting for snakes and heaving cocoanuts at monkeys as
respectable gorillas are wont, he would be weighing the world in scales
of his own invention and making, and measuring the distances of the
stars.

Pericles was taught by the gentle Anaxagoras, who gave all his money to
the State in order that he might be free. The State reciprocated by
cutting off his head, for republics are always ungrateful.

Aristotle was a pupil of Plato and worked his way through college,
sifting ashes, washing windows and sweeping sidewalks.

Leonardo was self-taught and gathered knowledge as a bee gathers honey,
although honey isn't honey until the bee digests it.

Sir Isaac Newton was a Cambridge man. He held the office of Master of the
Mint, and to relieve himself of the charge of atheism he anticipated the
enemy and wrote a book on the Hebrew Prophets, which gave the scientists
the laugh on him, but made his position with the State secure. Newton is
the only man herein mentioned who knew anything about theology, all the
others being "infidels" in their day, devoting themselves strictly to
this world. Humboldt was taught by the "natural method," and never took a
college degree.

Franklin was a graduate of the University of Hard