shocked me.

I was then in my twenty-second year, but it was the first time I
had ever seen any one who was familiar with the "Mecanique Celeste."
I looked with awe upon the assistants who filed in and out as upon men
who had all the mysteries of gravitation and the celestial motions at
their fingers' ends. I should not have been surprised to learn that
even the Hibernian who fed the fire had imbibed so much of the spirit
of the place as to admire the genius of Laplace and Lagrange. My own
rank was scarcely up to that of a tyro; but I was a few weeks later
employed on trial as computer at a salary of thirty dollars a month.

How could an incident so simple and an employment so humble be
in itself an epoch in one's life--an entrance into a new world?
To answer this question some account of my early life is necessary.
The interest now taken in questions of heredity and in the study of
the growing mind of the child may excuse a word about my ancestry
and early training.

Though born in Nova Scotia, I am of almost pure New England descent.
The first Simon Newcomb, from whom I am of the sixth generation, was
born in Massachusetts or Maine about 1666, and died at Lebanon, Conn.,
in 1745. His descendants had a fancy for naming their eldest sons
after him, and but for the chance of my father being a younger son,
I should have been the sixth Simon in unbroken lineal descent. [1]

Among my paternal ancestors none, so far as I know, with the exception
of Elder Brewster, were what we should now call educated men. Nor did
any other of them acquire great wealth, hold a high official position,
or do anything to make his name live in history. On my mother's side
are found New England clergymen and an English nonconformist preacher,
named Prince, who is said to have studied at Oxford towards the end
of the seventeenth century, but did not take a degree. I do not
know of any college graduate in the list.

Until I was four years old I lived in the house of my paternal
grandfather, about two miles from the pretty little village of
Wallace, at the mouth of the river of that name. He was, I believe,
a stonecutter by trade and owner of a quarry which has since become
important; but tradition credits him with unusual learning and with
having at some time taught school.

My maternal grandfather was "Squire" Thomas Prince, a native of Maine,
who had moved to Moncton, N. B., early in his life, and lived there
the rest of his days.