and leaped down to fetch it up; he gave one
howl, only one, once for all, and then they fetched _him_ up; he had
nothing more to say. So it will be with you if you go kiting about after
such things, flyin' kites for boat sails."

"But, Jamie, I think that I am the first boy that ever sailed on the
water without a boat--now don't you?"

"Well, I don't know. There's nothin' new under the sun. People like you
that are always inquirin' out the whys and wherefores of things
commonly get into trouble. Ben, wot will ever become of you, I wonder?"

"Archimedes made water run uphill."

"He did, hey? So he did, as I remember to have read. But he lost his
life broodin' over a lot of figers that he was drawin' on the
sand--angles and triangles an' things. The Roman soldier cut him down
when he was dreamin', and they let his tomb all grow up to briers. Do
you think, Ben, that you will ever make the river run uphill? Perhaps
you'll turn the water up to the sky on a kite string, and then we can
have rain in plantin' time. Who knows?"

He added thoughtfully:

"I wouldn't wonder, Ben, if you invented somethin' if you live. But the
prospect isn't very encouragin' of your ever doin' anything alarmin'."

"Did you ever hear what Archimedes exclaimed when he discovered the law
that a body plunged in water loses as much of its weight as is equal to
the weight of an equal volume of the fluid, and applied it to the alloy
in the king's crown?"

"No. Wot did he exclaim?"

"_Eureka! Eureka!_"

"Wot did he do that for?"

"It means, 'I have found it.'"

"Maybe you'll find out something sometime, Ben. You all run to dreams
about such things, and some boys turn their dreams into facts, as
architects build their imaginations and make money. But the fifteenth
child of a tallow chandler, who was the son of a blacksmith and of a
woman whose mother was bought and sold, a boy whose wits are off
kite-flyin' instead of wick-cuttin' and tallow-moldin', has no great
chance in the future, so it looks to me. But one can't always tell. I
don't think that you'll never get to be an Archimedes and cry out
'Eureka!' But you've got imagination enough to hitch the world to a kite
and send it off among the planets and shootin' stars, no one knows
where. I never did see any little shaver that had so much kite-flyin' in
his head as you."

"Archimedes said that if he only had a lever long enough he would move
the world."

"He did, hey? Well, little Ben Fr