But Tyndall did not give up. He rose every morning LITTLE at six, took his cold bath, dressed and ran up hill half JOURNEYS a mile and back. He breakfasted with the family, that he might talk German. Then he dived into differential calculus and philosophical abstrusities. He was not sent to college-he went. And he made college give up all it had. On the wall of his room, as a sort of ornamental frieze in charcoal, he wrote this from Emerson, "High knowledge and great strength are within the reach of every man who unflinchingly enacts his best." Down in the town was a bronze bust of a man who wrote for it the following inscription, "This is the face of a man who has struggled energetically." One might almost imagine that Hawthorne had received from Tyndall the hint which evolved itself into that fine story, "The Great Stone Face." The bust just mentioned, attracted Tyndall for another reason: Carlyle had written of the man it symboled, "Reader, to thee, thyself, even now, he has one counsel to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchemy. Think of living! Thy life, were thou the pitifullest of all the sons of earth, is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own; it is all thou hast with which to front eternity. Work, then, even as he has done,-like a star, unhasting and unresting." LITTLE JOURNEYS T Marburg, Tyndall was on good terms with the great Bunsen, and used to act as his assistant in making practical chemical experiments before his classes These amazing things done by chemists in public are seldom of much value beyond giving a thrill to visitors who would otherwise drowseit is like humor in an oration-it opens up the mental pores Alexander Humboldt once attended a Bunsen lecture at Marburg and complimented Tyndall by saying, "When I take up sleight-of-hand work, consider yourself engaged as my first helper." Tyndall's way of standing with his back to the audience, shutting off the view of Bunsen's hands while he was getting ready to make an artificial peal of thunder, made Humboldt laugh heartily. Humboldt thought so well of the young man who spoke German with an Irish accent, that he presented him with an inscribed copy of one of his books. The volume was a most valuable one, for Humboldt only published in de luxe limited editions, and Tyndall was so overcome that all he could say was, "I'll do as much for you some day." Not long after this, through loaning money to a fellow student, he found himself in need of funds, and borrowed two pounds on the book from an 'Ebrew Jew. That night, he dreamed that Humboldt found the volume in a second-hand store. In the morning, Tyndall was waiting for the pawnbroker to open his shop, to get the book back ere his offense was discovered. Heinrich Heine once inscribed a volume of his poems to a friend, and afterward discovered the volume on the counter of a second-hand dealer. He thereupon haggled with the book man, bought the volume and beneath his first inscription wrote, "With the renewed regards of H. Heine." He then sent the volume for the second time to his friend. 'Tis possible that Tyndall had heard of this. In 1850, when Tyndall was thirty years of age, he visited London, and of course went to the British Institution. There he met Faraday for the first time and was welcomed by him. The British Institution consists of a laboratory, a museum and a lecture hall, and its object is scientific research. It began in a very simple way in one room and now occupies several buildings. It was founded by Benjamin Thompson, an American, and so it was but proper that its sister concern, the Smithsonian Institute, should have been founded by an Englishman. ¶ Sir Humphrey Davy on being asked, "What is your greatest discovery?" replied, "Michael Faraday." But this was a mere pleasantry—the truth being that Michael Faraday discovered Sir Humphrey Davy. Faraday was a bookbinder's apprentice, a fact that should interest all good Roycrofters. Evenings, when Sir Humphrey Davy lectured at the British Institution, the young bookbinder was there. After the lecture he would go home and write out what he had heard, with a few ideas of his own added. For be it LITTLE known, taking notes at a lecture is a bad habit-good JOURNEYS reporters carry no note books. After a year Faraday sent a bundle of his impressions The love of Davy for the young bookbinder was al- Something of the same feeling must have swept over Faraday after his twenty-five years work as director of the British Institution, when John Tyndall appeared, tall, thin, bronzed, animated-quoting Bunsen and Humboldt with an Irish accent. And so in time Tyndall became assistant to Faraday; then lecturer of natural history, and when Faraday died, by popular acclaim, Tyndall was made Fullerian Lecturer and took Faraday's place. This was to be his life work, and it so placed him before the world, that whatever he said or did had a wide significance and an extended influence. YNDALL was a most intrepid mountain But for him this was not to be, for fate is fond of At one time Tyndall attempted to swim a mountain torrent; the stream as if angry with his Irish assurance, tossed him against the rocks, brought him back in fierce eddies, and again and again threw him against a solid face of stone. When he was rescued he was a mass of bruises, but fortunately no bones were broken. LITTLE |