to him as he lay in bed, when his
intellect began to wander. It is doubtful whether he regained his senses
before he died, on June 12, 1885.

At one period of his life Jenkin was a Freethinker, holding, as Mr.
Stevenson says, all dogmas as 'mere blind struggles to express the
inexpressible.' Nevertheless, as time went on he came back to a belief
in Christianity. 'The longer I live,' he wrote, 'the more convinced
I become of a direct care by God--which is reasonably impossible--but
there it is.' In his last year he took the Communion.

CHAPTER VII. JOHANN PHILIPP REIS.

Johann Philipp Reis, the first inventor of an electric telephone, was
born on January 7, 1834, at the little town of Gelnhausen, in Cassel,
where his father was a master baker and petty farmer. The boy lost
his mother during his infancy, and was brought up by his paternal
grandmother, a well-read, intelligent woman, of a religious turn. While
his father taught him to observe the material world, his grandmother
opened his mind to the Unseen.

At the age of six he was sent to the common school of the town, where
his talents attracted the notice of his instructors, who advised his
father to extend his education at a higher college. Mr. Reis died before
his son was ten years old; but his grandmother and guardians afterwards
placed him at Garnier's Institute, in Friedrichsdorf, where he showed a
taste for languages, and acquired both French and English, as well as a
stock of miscellaneous information from the library. At the end of
his fourteenth year he passed to Hassel's Institute, at
Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he picked up Latin and Italian. A love of
science now began to show itself, and his guardians were recommended to
send him to the Polytechnic School of Carlsruhe; but one of them, his
uncle, wished him to become a merchant, and on March 1, 1850, Reis
was apprenticed to the colour trade in the establishment of Mr. J. F
Beyerbach, of Frankfort, against his own will. He told his uncle that he
would learn the business chosen for him, but should continue his proper
studies by-and-by.

By diligent service he won the esteem of Mr. Beyerbach, and devoted his
leisure to self-improvement, taking private lessons in mathematics and
physics, and attending the lectures of Professor R. Bottger on mechanics
at the Trade School. When his apprenticeship ended he attended the
Institute of Dr. Poppe, in Frankfort, and as neither history nor
geography was tau