hy, where is the miller?" said his friend.

"That is true!--I must look out for one," said Isaac; and he set himself to
consider how the deficiency should be supplied.

He might easily have made the miniature figure of a man; but then it would
not have been able to move about, and perform the duties of a miller. As
Captain Lemuel Gulliver had not yet discovered the island of Lilliput,
Isaac did not know that there were little men in the world, whose size was
just suited to his windmill. It so happened, however, that a mouse had
just been caught in the trap; and, as no other miller could be found, Mr.
Mouse was appointed to that important office. The new miller made a very
respectable appearance in his dark gray coat. To be sure, he had not a
very good character for honesty, and was suspected of sometimes stealing a
portion of the grain which was given him to grind. But perhaps some
two-legged millers are quite as dishonest as this small quadruped.

As Isaac grew older, it was found that he had far more important matters
in his mind than the manufacture of toys, like the little windmill. All
day long, if left to himself, he was either absorbed in thought, or
engaged in some book of mathematics, or natural philosophy. At night, I
think it probable, he looked up with reverential curiosity to the stars,
and wondered whether they were worlds, like our own,--and how great was
their distance from the earth,--and what was the power that kept them in
their courses. Perhaps, even so early in life, Isaac Newton felt a
presentiment that he should be able, hereafter, to answer all these
questions.

When Isaac was fourteen years old, his mother's second husband being now
dead, she wished her son to leave school, and assist her in managing the
farm at Woolsthorpe. For a year or two, therefore, he tried to turn his
attention to farming. But his mind was so bent on becoming a scholar, that
his mother sent him back to school, and afterwards to the University of
Cambridge.

I have now finished my anecdotes of Isaac Newton's boyhood. My story would
be far too long, were I to mention all the splendid discoveries which he
made, after he came to be a man. He was the first that found out the
nature of Light; for, before his day, nobody could tell what the sunshine
was composed of. You remember, I suppose, the story of an apple's falling
on his head, and thus leading him to discover the force of gravitation,
which keeps the heavenly bodies