looked with vast admiration at the things which Isaac
manufactured. And his old grandmother, I suppose, was never weary of
talking about him.

"He'll make a capital workman, one of these days," she would probably say.
"No fear but what Isaac will do well in the world, and be a rich man
before he dies."

It is amusing to conjecture what were the anticipations of his grandmother
and the neighbors, about Isaac's future life. Some of them, perhaps,
fancied that he would make beautiful furniture of mahogany, rose-wood, or
polished oak, inlaid with ivory and ebony, and magnificently gilded. And
then, doubtless, all the rich people would purchase these fine things, to
adorn their drawing-rooms. Others probably thought that little Isaac was
destined to be an architect, and would build splendid mansions for the
nobility and gentry, and churches too, with the tallest steeples that had
ever been seen in England.

Some of his friends, no doubt, advised Isaac's grandmother to apprentice
him to a clockmaker; for, besides his mechanical skill, the boy seemed to
have a taste for mathematics, which would be very useful to him in that
profession. And then, in due time, Isaac would set up for himself, and
would manufacture curious clocks, like those that contain sets of dancing
figures, which issue from the dial-plate when the hour is struck; or like
those, where a ship sails across the face of the clock, and is seen
tossing up and down on the waves, as often as the pendulum vibrates.

Indeed, there was some ground for supposing that Isaac would devote
himself to the manufacture of clocks; since he had already made one, of a
kind which nobody had ever heard of before. It was set a-going, not by
wheels and weights, like other clocks, but by the dropping of water. This
was an object of great wonderment to all the people roundabout; and it
must be confessed that there are few boys, or men either, who could
contrive to tell what o'clock it is, by means of a bowl of water.

Besides the water-clock, Isaac made a sun-dial. Thus his grandmother was
never at a loss to know the hour; for the water-clock would tell it in the
shade, and the dial in the sunshine. The sun-dial is said to be still in
existence at Woolsthorpe, on the corner of the house where Isaac dwelt. If
so, it must have marked the passage of every sunny hour that has elapsed,
since Isaac Newton was a boy. It marked all the famous moments of his
life; it marked the hour of his d