arc of a circle. All attempts to
straighten it were vain, so they took out the lenses and went to work
making a tube of copper. In this, brother, sister and genius--which is
concentration and perseverance--united to overcome the innate meanness
of animate and inanimate things. A failure was not a failure to them--it
was an opportunity to meet a difficulty and overcome it.

The partial success of the new telescope aroused the brother and the
sister to fresh exertions. The work had been begun as a mere
recreation--a rest from the exactions of the public which they diverted
and amused with their warblings, concussions and vibrations.

They were still amateur astronomers, and the thought that they
would ever be anything else had not come to them. But they wanted
to get a better view of the heavens--a view through a Newtonian
reflecting-telescope. So they counted up their savings and decided that
if they could get some instrument-maker in London to make them a
reflecting-telescope six feet long, they would be perfectly willing to
pay him fifty pounds for it. This study of the skies was their only form
of dissipation, and even if it was a little expensive it enabled them to
escape the Pump-Room rabble and flee boredom and introspection. A hunt
was taken through London, but no one could be found who would make such
an instrument as they wanted for the price they could afford to pay.
They found, however, an amateur lens-polisher who offered to sell his
tools, materials and instruments for a small sum. After consultation,
the brother and sister bought him out. So at the price they expected to
pay for a telescope they had a machine-shop on their hands.

The work of grinding and polishing lenses is a most delicate business.
Only a person of infinite patience and persistency can succeed at it.

In Allegheny, Pennsylvania, lives John Brashear, who, by his own
efforts, assisted by a noble wife, graduated from a rolling-mill and
became a maker of telescopes.

Brashear is practically the one telescope lens-maker of America since
Alvan Clark resigned. There is no competition in this line--the
difficulties are too appalling for the average man. The slightest
accident or an unseen flaw, and the work of months or years goes into
the dustbin of time, and all must be gone over again.

So when we think of this brother and sister sailing away upon an unknown
ocean--working day after day, night after night, week after week, and
month afte