bett's English Grammar, which I found amusing and interesting,
especially the criticisms upon the grammar found here and there in
royal addresses to Parliament and other state papers. On the whole
I am not sure but that the book justified my father's good opinion,
although I cannot but think that it was rather hypercritical. I had
been taught the rudiments of French in Wallace when quite a child by
a Mr. Oldright, of whose methods and pronunciation my memory gives
me a most favorable impression. I now got Cobbett's French Grammar,
probably a much less commendable book than his English one. I had
never yet fathomed the mysteries of analytic geometry or the calculus,
and so got Davies' books on those subjects. That on the calculus
was perhaps the worst that could be put into the hands of a person
situated as I was. Two volumes of Bezout's Mathematics, in French,
about a century old, were, I think, rather better. Say's Political
Economy was the first book I read on that subject, and it was quite
a delight to see human affairs treated by scientific methods.

I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I
was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I
should turn the subject to account. I knew that Newton's "Principia"
was a celebrated book, so I got a copy of the English translation.
The path through it was rather thorny, but I at least caught the
spirit here and there. No teacher at the present time would think
of using it as a text-book, yet as a mental discipline, and for
the purpose of enabling one to form a mental image of the subject,
its methods at least are excellent. I got a copy of the "American
Journal of Science," hoping it might enlighten me, but was frightened
by its big words, and found nothing that I could understand.

During the year at Sudlersville I made several efforts which,
though they were insignificant so far as immediate results were
concerned, were in some respects of importance for my future work.
With no knowledge of algebra except what was derived from the meagre
text-books I could pick up,--not having heard even the name of
Abel, or knowing what view of the subject was taken by professional
mathematicians,--I made my first attempt at a scientific article, "A
New Demonstration of the Binomial Theorem." This I sent to Professor
Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, to see if he deemed
it suitable for publication. He promptly replie