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His mother, twice a widow, moved back to "Woolsthorpe," a big name for a very small estate. Isaac was made the man of the house. The ambition of his mother was that he should become a farmer and stock-raiser.

It seems that the boy entered upon his farm duties with an alacrity that was not to last. His heart was not in the work, but the desire to please his mother spurred him forward.

On one occasion, being sent with a load of produce to Grantham, he stopped to visit his old school, and during his call struck a bargain with one of the boys for a copy of Descartes' Geometry. The purchase exhausted his finances, so that he was unable to buy the articles his mother had sent him for, but when he got home he explained that one might get along without such luxuries as clothing, but a good Geometry was a family necessity. About this time he made a water-clock, and also that sundial which can be seen today, carved into the stone on the corner of the house. He still continued his making of kites which had been begun at Grantham; and gave the superstitious neighbors a thrill by flying kites at night with lighted lanterns made from paper, attached to the tails. He made water-wheels and windmills, and once constructed a miniature mill that he ran by placing a mouse in a treadmill inside.

In the meantime the cows got into the corn, and the weeds in the garden improved each shining hour. The fond mother was now sorely disappointed in her boy, and made remarks to the effect that if she had looked after his bringing up instead of entrusting him to an indulgent grandmother, affairs at this time would not be in their present state. Parents are apt to be fussy: they can not wait.

Matters reached a climax when the sheep that Isaac had been sent to watch, overran the garden and demolished everything but the purslane and ragweed, while all the time the young man was under the hedge working out mathematical problems from his Descartes.

At this stage the mother called in her brother, the Reverend Mr. Ayscough, and he advised that a boy who was so bound to study should be allowed to study.

And the good man offered to pay the wages of a man to take Isaac's place on the farm.

So, greatly to the surprise and pleasure of Mr. Stokes of Grantham, Isaac one fine day returned with his books, just as if he had only been gone a day instead of a year.

At the home of the apothecary the lad was thrice welcome. He had endeared himself to the women of the household especially. He did not play with other boys—their games and sports were absolutely outside of his orbit. He was silent and so self-contained that he won from his schoolfellows the sobriquet of "Old Coldfeet." Nothing surprised him; he never lost his temper; he laughed so seldom that the incident was noted and told to the neighbors; his attitude was one of abstraction, and when he spoke it was like a judge charging a jury with soda-water.

All his spare time was given up to whittling, pounding, sawing, and making mathematical calculations.

Not all of his inventions were toys, for among other things he constructed a horseless carriage which was run by a crank and pumping device, by the occupants.

The idea of the horseless carriage is a matter that has long been in the minds of inventors.

Several men, supremely great, have tried their hands and head at it. Leibnitz worked at it; Swedenborg prophesied the automobile, and made a carriage, placing the horse inside, and did not give up the scheme until the horse ran away with himself and demolished a year's work. The government here interfered and placed an injunction against "the making of any more such diabolical contrivances for the disturbance of the public peace." All of which makes us believe that if either Edison or Marconi had lived two hundred years ago, the bailiffs would have looked after them with the butt end of the law for the regulation of wizards and witches—wizards at Menlo Park being as bad as witches at Salem.

Newton's horseless carriage later came to grief in a similar way to Swedenborg's invention—it worked so well and so fast that it turned a complete somersault into a ditch, and its manipulation was declared to be a pastime more dangerous than football.

Not all the things produced by Isaac about this time were failures. For instance, among other things he made a table, a chair and a cupboard for a young woman who was a fellow-boarder at the apothecary's. The excellence of young Newton's handiwork was shown in that the articles just mentioned outlasted both owner and maker.

uch of the reminiscence concerning the Grantham days of Sir Isaac Newton comes from the fortunate owner of that historic old table, chair and cupboard. This was Mary Story, who was later Mrs. Vincent.

Miss Story was the same age as Isaac. She was just eighteen when the furniture was made roycroftie—she was a young lady, grown, and wore a dress with a train; moreover, she had been to London and had been courted by a widower, while Isaac Newton was only a lad in roundabouts.

Age counts for little—it is experience and temperament that weigh in the scale. Isaac was only a little boy, and Mary Story treated him like one. And here seems a good place to quote what Doctor Charcot said, "In arranging the formula for a great man, make sure you delay adolescence: rareripes rot early."

Isaac and Mary became very good chums, and used to ramble the woods together hand in hand, in a way that must have frightened them both had they been on the same psychic plane. Isaac had about the same regard for her that he might have had for a dear maiden aunt who would mend his old socks and listen patiently, pretending to be interested when he talked of parallelograms and prismatic spectra. But evidently Mary Story thought of him with a thrill, for she stoutly resented the boys calling him "Coldfeet."

In due time Isaac gravitated to Cambridge. Mary mooed a wee, but soon consoled herself with a sure-enough lover, and was married to Mr. Vincent, a worthy man and true, but one who had not sufficient soul-caloric to make her forget her Isaac.

This friendship with Mary Story is often spoken of as the one love-affair in the life of Sir Isaac Newton. It was all prosily Platonic on his part, but as Mary lived out her life at Grantham, and Sir Isaac Newton used to go there occasionally, and when he did, always called upon her, the relationship was certainly noteworthy.

The only break in that lifelong friendship occurred when each was past fifty.

Sir Isaac Newton was paying his little yearly call at Grantham; and was seated in a rustic arbor by the side of Mrs. Vincent, now grown gray, and the mother of a goodly brood, well grown up. As they thus sat talking of days agone, his thoughts wandered off upon quadratic equations, and to aid his mind in following the thread, he absent-mindedly lighted his pipe, and smoked in silence. As the tobacco died low, he gazed about for a convenient utensil to use in pushing the ashes down in the bowl of his pipe. Looking down he saw the lady's hand resting upon his knee, and he straightway utilized the forefinger of his vis-a-vis. A suppressed feminine screech followed, but the fires of friendship were not quenched by so slight an incident, which Mrs. Vincent knew grew out of temperament, and not from wrong intent.

She lived to be eighty-five, and to the day of her death caressed the scar—the cicatrice of a love-wound. All of