ear the
thought of other people becoming losers by my schemes; and I
have the happy disposition of always painting the worst.

Watt's timidity and fear of money matters generally have been already
noted. He had the Scotch peasant's horror of debt--anything but that.
This probably arises from the fact that the trifling sums owing by the
poor to their poor neighbors who have kindly helped them in distress are
actually needed by these generous friends for comfortable existence. The
loss is serious, and this cuts deeply into grateful hearts. The
millionaire's downfall, with large sums owing to banks, rich
money-lenders, and wealthy manufacturers, really amounts to little. No
one actually suffers, since imprisonment for debt no longer exists;
hence "debt" means little to the great operator, who neither suffers
want himself by failure nor entails it upon others.

To Watt, pressing pecuniary cares were never absent, and debt added to
these made him the most afflicted of men. Besides this, he says, he had
been cheated and was "unlucky enough to know." Wise man! ignorance in
such cases is indeed bliss. We should almost be content to be cheated as
long as we do not find it out.

It was at such a crisis as this that another cloud, and a dark one,
came. The sanguine, enterprising, kindly Roebuck was in financial
straits. His pits had been much troubled by water, which no existing
machinery could pump out. He had hoped that the new engine would prove
successful and sufficiently powerful in time to avert the drowning of
the pits, but this hope had failed. His embarrassments were so pressing
that he was unable to pay the cost of the engine patent, according to
agreement, and Watt had to borrow the money for this from that
never-failing friend, Professor Black. Long may his memory be gratefully
remembered. Watt had the delightful qualities which attracted friends,
and those of the highest and best character, but among them all, though
more than one might have been willing, none were both able and willing
to sustain him in days of trouble except the famous discoverer of latent
heat. When we think of Watt, we picture him holding Black by the one
hand and Small by the other, repeating to them

"I think myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul remembering my dear friends."

The patent was secured--so much to the good--but Watt had already spent
too much time upon profitless work, at least more time than he could
a