ress to the Midland Institute--"the necessity
at an early age to go forth into the world and work for the means needed
for his own support." President Garfield's verdict was to the same
effect, "The best heritage to which a man can be born is poverty." The
writer's knowledge of the usual effect of the heritage of milliondom
upon the sons of millionaires leads him fully to concur with these high
authorities, and to believe that it is neither to the rich nor to the
noble that human society has to look for its preservation and
improvement, but to those who, like Watt, have to labor that they may
live, and thus make a proper return for what they receive, as working
bees, not drones, in the social hive. Not from palace or castle, but
from the cottage have come, or can come, the needed leaders of our race,
under whose guidance it is to ascend.

We have a fine record in the three generations of the Watts,
great-grandfather, grandfather and father, all able and successful men,
whose careers were marked by steady progress, growing in usefulness to
their fellows; men of unblemished character, kind and considerate,
winning the confidence and affection of their neighbors, and leaving
behind them records unstained.

So much for the male branch of the family tree, but this is only half.
What of that of the grandmothers and mothers of the line--equally
important? For what a Scotch boy born to labor is to become, and how,
cannot be forecast until we know what his mother is, who is to him
nurse, servant, governess, teacher and saint, all in one. We must look
to the Watt women as carefully as to the men; and these fortunately we
find all that can be desired. His mother was Agnes Muirhead, a
descendant of the Muirheads of Lachop, who date away back before the
reign of King David, 1122. Scott, in his "Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border," gives us the old ballad of "The Laird of Muirhead," who played
a great part in these unsettled days.

The good judgment which characterised the Watts for three generations is
nowhere more clearly shown than in the lady James Watt's father courted
and finally succeeded in securing for his wife. She is described as a
gentlewoman of reserved and quiet deportment, "esteemed by her
neighbours for graces of person as well as of mind and heart, and not
less distinguished for her sound sense and good manners than for her
cheerful temper and excellent housewifery." Her likeness is thus drawn,
and all that we have