The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1881-11-19
THE BOYHOOD OF SIR ISAAC NEW
TON.

Sir Isaac Newton is the greatest of
modern philosophers and mechanics.
When he was born, December %, 1912,
three months after his fathers DEATH
he was so small and feeble that no one
supposed he would live day; but the
weak infant grew to be healthy, TO-
bust man, who lived until he was
eighty-four years old. He began to in
vent or contrive machines and to show
his taste for mechanics in early child
hood. He inherited some property
from his father, and his mother, who
had married a second time, sent him TO
the best schools, and to the University
of Cambridge. At school he soon
showed his natural taste; he amused
himself with little saws, hatchets, ham,
mers and different tools, and when his
companions were at play spent his time
in making machines and toys. He
made a wooden clock when he was
twelve years old, and the model of a
windmill, and in his mill he put q
mouse, which he called his miller. and
which turned the wheels by running
around its cage. He made a water
clock four feet high, and q cart with
four wheels, not unlike velocipede, in
which he could drive himself by turn
ing windlass.
His love of mechanics often inter-
rupted his studies at school, and he was
sometimes making clocks and carriages
when he ought to have been constituting
Latin and Greek. But his mind was 30
active that he easily caught up again
with his fellow-scholars, and was al
ways fond of every kind of knowledge.
He taught the school-boys howto make
paper kites; he made paper lanterns by
which to 90 toschool in the dark winter
mornings; and sometimes at night he
would alarm the whole country round
by raising his kites in the air with
paper lantern attached TO the tail; they
would shine like meteors in the dis
lance, and the country people, at that
time very ignorant, would fancy them
omens of evil, and celestial lights.
He was never idle for moment. He
learned to draw and sketch; he made
little tables and sideboards for the chill
dren to play with; he watched the mo-
tons of the sun by means of pegs he
had fixed in the wall of the house where
he lived, and marked every hour.
At last, when he was about sixteen,
his mother placed him in charge of
farm, and every Saturday he went with
a servant to Grantham market to sell
his corn and vegetables. But the af-
fairs of the farm did not prosper; the
young philosopher hid himself away in
a room in garnet which he hired,
studying mechanics and inventing a
water-wheel or a new model, while the
sheep wandered away in the field, and
the cattle devoured his corn.
Next he went to Cambridge Universe
ty, and became a famous scholar. At
the age OF twenty-touI he began his
study of the spectrum, as philosophers
call that brilliant picture of the colors
of the rainbow, which is shown by the
SUMS rays shining through a three
sided piece of glass, called a prism. 1t
is one OF the most beautiful objects in
science or nature, and Newton's study
of its splendid colors led to his greatest
discoveries in optics. or the science of
the sight. In our own time the use of
the prism and its spectrum has shown
us of what the sun and moon are COM
posed.
One day, as Newton sat musing in
his garden at his retired country home,
an apple fell from tree to the ground.
a great idea ut once arose in his mind,