getting a sight of the great man himself. Perhaps you wonder if a great crowd gathered. I don't believe half a dozen people crossed the street ; and although the train was evidently intended to impress the world on whatever road it ran, it did not seem to have succeeded at all. Nobody cared particularly about Vanderbilt ; and the sight of this spectacle, indicating his princiely wealth, gave me but a feeling of pain. I remember a gathering at a railroad station a few years after this. The gathering was to get-a glimpse of Garfield. People came for miles around, and a great crowd surrounded the end of the car where he spoke to them during the brief interval the train stopped. The people flocked to see him, and to take him by the hand, as many as could, because he had risen from obscurity--yes, from being a canal-boy, by his own efforts and industry. Garfield was never worth very much money, I believe ; but he won the love and esteem and respect of almost the whole world, because his life was given for the good of the people. Well, in that two-days' visit with brother Cowan I did not hear anything said about great chances of making money, nor any discussions whether this, that, or the other would _pay_. It is sometimes said that riches tend to discourage energy and industry. It has not been so in this case. Friend Cowan must have been all his life a most energetic and determined worker. I don't know how many people be employs, but I feel sure he might employ a great many if he chose. But the work I speak of is the work of his own hand and his own brain. When I met him at the train I offered to carry a part of his luggage, and I took hold of a nice square box that I thought would be just about what I should like to carry. I very soon, however, passed it over to Ernest. Had the box been filled with iron wedges, I should not have been more astonished. Pretty soon it transpired that this was his microscope. You know, friends, I have for many years worked in metals. I know pretty nearly how many years of patient, earnest toil it takes to make a fine mechanic, and therefore I was prepared to be surprised when Mrs. Cowan remarked that the microscope was the work of his own hands. The more I examined the instrument, the more astonished I became. People often say, in looking at home-made work like this, that it it wonderfully well done for _hand-work_ ; but this piece of machinery was the best work I _ever_ saw in my life, of any kind. I mentally figured up the amount of machinery required for the different operations needed, and a little conversation satisfied me that he was expert in the use of the lathe and other mechanical tools. Those who use microscopes have doubtless discovered how necessary it is that every part of the machine should move freely, but at the same time never should move so easily as to move of its own accord. It never occured to me, until I saw friend Cowan's instrument, that a device could be made to allow these heavy parts not only to move just right, but to keep moving just right. Not only is every portion of the instrument adjustable in every direction, but the friction with which the parts move is also adjustable ; and at any time any part can be made to work a little tighter or a little looser, by a slight turning of minute screws. A great many times I have felt impatient because of the length of time it takes to accomplish anything with the microscope, or to exhibit it to friends. Now, although this instrument is remarkably strong and heavy, our friend handles it with greater rapidity and accuracy than I ever saw anything in the line of optical instruments landed before. Mr. Cowan was not only the most thoroughly versed man I have ever met or heard of in every thing pertaining to bee culture, but he was equally at home in the department of mechanics. At different periods of his life he has worked at or worked out most of the well-known mechanical problems. I was pleased to hear him him tell us about working on perpetual motion, to be run by magnetism. He has made an electric clock, and one that performed well, too, which is more than can be said of the one that I made some years ago.