e must fulfill
his contract with his master. For seven years he was faithful to his
work, while his heart was elsewhere. And all that time, in the
eagerness of his thirst for knowledge, he was imbibing facts which
helped him to plan electrical achievements, the possibilities of which
have not, to this day, been exhausted,--or even half realized. Like
Franklin, he seemed to forecast the scientific future for ages.

At length he was free to follow his bent, and his mind turned at once
to Sir Humphry Davy. With a beating heart, divided between hope and
fear, he wrote to the great man, telling what he wished, and asking his
aid. The scientist, remembering his own day of small things, wrote the
youth, politely, that he was going out of town, but would see if he
could, sometime, aid him. He also said that "science is a harsh
mistress, and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewards those
who devote themselves exclusively to her service."

This was not very encouraging, but the young votary of science was
nothing daunted, and toiled at his uncongenial trade, with the added
discomfort of an ill-tempered employer, giving all his evenings and odd
moments to study and experiments.

Then came another red-letter day. He was growing depressed, and feared
that Sir Humphry had forgotten his quasi-promise, when one evening a
carriage stopped at the door, and out stepped an important-looking
footman in livery, with a note from the famous scientist, requesting
the young bookbinder to call on him on the following morning. At last
had come the answer to the prayer of little Michael Faraday, as will
come the answer to all who back their prayers with patient, persistent
hard work, in spite of discouragement, disappointment, and failure. And
when, on that never-to-be-forgotten morning, he was engaged by the
great scientist at a salary of six dollars a week, with two rooms at
the top of the house, to wash bottles, clean the instruments, move them
to and from the lecture rooms, and make himself generally useful in the
laboratory and out of it, no happier youth could be found in all London.

The door was open; not, indeed, wide, but sufficiently to allow this
ardent disciple to work his way into the innermost shrine of the temple
of science. Though it took years and years of plodding, incessant work
and study, and a devotion to purpose with which nothing was allowed to
interfere, it made Faraday, by virtue of his marvelous discoveries in