e
land, even by the remotest and poorest.

Who has supplied all these millions of miles of wire? A large part of
the answer to this question is given when we pronounce the name at the
head of this article, Ichabod Washburn. In the last years of his life he
had seven hundred men at Worcester making wire, the product of whose
labor was increased a hundred fold by machinery which he had invented or
adapted.

It is curious to note how he seemed to stumble into the business just in
the nick of time. I say, _seemed_; but, in truth, he had been prepared
for success in it by a long course of experience and training. He was a
poor widow's son, born on the coast of Massachusetts, a few miles from
Plymouth Rock; his father having died in early manhood, when this boy
and a twin brother were two months old. His mother, suddenly left with
three little children, and having no property except the house in which
she lived, supported her family by weaving, in which her children from a
very early age could give her some help. She kept them at school,
however, during part of the winter, and instilled into their minds good
principles. When this boy was nine years of age she was obliged, as the
saying was, "to put him out to live" to a master five miles from her
house.

On his way to his new home he was made to feel the difference between a
hard master and a kind mother. Having a quick intelligent mind, he
questioned the man concerning the objects they passed. At length the boy
saw a windmill, and he asked what that was.

"Don't ask me so many questions, boy," answered the man, in a harsh,
rough voice.

The little fellow was silenced, and he vividly remembered the event, the
tone, and the scene, to old age. His employer was a maker of harness,
carriages, and trunks, and it was the boy's business to take care of a
horse and two cows, light fires, chop wood, run errands, and work in the
shop. He never forgot the cold winter mornings, and the loud voice of
his master rousing him from sleep to make the fire, and go out to the
barn and get the milking done before daylight. His sleeping-place was a
loft above the shop reached by a ladder. Being always a timid boy, he
suffered extremely from fear in the dark and lonely garret of a building
where no one else slept, and to which he had to grope his way alone.

What would the dainty boys of the present time think of going to mill on
a frosty morning astride of a bag of corn on the horse's back,