The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-06-12
The Scribe's Report.


We ought not to pass by the work of
preparing our Authorized Version of
the Bible-a brief account of which
was given last week - without some
notice of the influence of this trans
lation upon English literature. In one
of the Scribe's earliest reports it may
be remembered that quotation was
given from Hazlitt, in which he as
scribed the brilliancy of the Eliza
bethan period chiefly to a previous
translation of the Bible. And of our
King James Bible another writer on
English literature says that " it has done
more to refine the taste, to kindle the
imagination, to enlarge the understand
ing, to give strength to the reasoning
powers, and to supply the mind with
images of beauty, tenderness and SUBJ
Unity, than all other books which have
been borne down to us on the stream
of time, while it has secured for our
language immortality and perpetual
youth"
Answers to the questions of May 10
have been received from Marion O.
Scott, Edna b. Dana and B. II. a.
The following, in regard to The Tea
kettles Song" is from the first of
these
"The poem refers to James Watt,
who once sat an hour holding first a
spoon and then saucer over the steam
rising from a kettle and watching the
drops of water as they gathered upon
them. He afterwards greatly improved
the steam engine"
The following extract from a sketch
in Hdrper'S Young People gives US
glimpse at some of the characteristics
of this boy:
"Weel, neighbor, has he been good
laddie?" The laddie in question
was the -chandler's clever son (now
smart, though rather delicate, boy of
fourteen), who had been on visit to
an English friend in Glasgow; and the
speaker was his mother, who had come
to fetch him home again. "Good !"
echoed the hostess. He's made us
all Jump out of our skins, that's what he's
done" The mother looked puzzled, as
well she might. " It's not that he's been
behaving badly" continued her friend.
"He's as good as gold, bless him! But
as sure as we get settled round the fire
at night he begins telling all sorts of
stories out of his own head, some so
sad that they set us all crying like ba-
bies and some so terrible that we
daren't look behind us, and that way
he keeps us up every night till pretty
near twelve o'clock; for when once he's
begun a story you can't bulge till you've
heard how it ended. l don't blame
him neither, for Gas his brother John
says) he can't sleep at night, poor lad
and so of course he don't care to 90 to
bed. But if he was to stay another
week he'd drive me clean crazy, as sure
as stand here" With this good char
acter our hero went back to Greenock :;
but it seemed to be " out of the frying
pan into the fire" with him, for the
very next evening his mother, coming
home to tea, found him getting a terri
BILE scolding from the shrill voice of his
old aunt " meier saw sic an idle in a.
my days. Can We no TAX book, mon,
and employ yersel' usefully? A this
while ye've done naething but taxi aft
yon kettle-lid and put it on again, and
baud hold a cup or spoon i the
steam, to watch the water drap frae it.
Are we no ashamed to waste your time
in sic a daft-like way?" But the old
lady lived long enough to be very sorry
for those hasty words of hers, when she
found out that what she had mistaken
for the idle caprice of a careless boy
was really the first idea of the steam
engine shaping itself in the mind of
James Watt.
1t is true, as B. II. A. says, that
Watt did not invent the steam engine,
although it owes a great part of what
it can do now to the improvements he
made in it. B. II. A. gives some in.
teresting facts in regard to the history
of the steam engine, from which we
take the following:
Heron of Alexandria is supposed tc
have been the inventor of the steam
engine, as far back as the third century
before Christ. Although a mere toy,
his machine, known as the Kolipile
possessed all the principles of the steam
engine. Works on the steam engine
and inventions pertaining thereto are
noticed in 1913, 1918, 1868, 1893, 1899
l7l3 and 1876. Watt records the per
lection of his invention of utilizing ex
pansion and the condensation of The
steam in separate cylinder in 1853
and his first patent in 1862"
The remaining answers of this date
agree in giving William Shakespeare al
the greatest dramatist, and the time ant
place of his birth as 1864, at Stratford
on-Avon. But each one has differen
spelling of the name of the dramatist
This is not strange, when we conside
that Richard Grant White gives thirty