to a barber, and after learning the business, he set up for himself in Bolton, in 1760, occupying an underground cellar, over which he put the sign, "Come to the subterraneous barber-he shaves for a penny." The other barbers found their customers leaving them, and reduced their prices to his standard; when Arkwright, determined to push his trade, announced his determination to give "A clean shave for a halfpenny." After a few years he quitted his cellar, and became an itinerant dealer in hair. At that time wigs were worn, and this was an important branch of the barbering business. He went about buying hair, and was accustomed to attend the hiring fairs throughout Lancashire, resorted to by young women for the purpose of securing their long tresses; and it is said. that in negotiations of this sort he was very successful. He also dealt in a chemical hair-dye, which he used adroitly, and thereby secured a considerable trade. Being of a mechanical turn, he devoted a good deal of his spare time to contriving models of machines, and, like many self-taught men of the same bias, he endeavored to invent perpetual motion.

He followed his experiments so devotedly, that he neglected his business, lost the little money he had saved, and was reduced to great poverty. His wife— for he had by this time married-was impatient at what she conceived to be a wanton waste of time and money, and, in a moment of sudden wrath, she seized upon and destroyed his models, hoping thus to remove the cause of the family privations. Arkwright was a stubborn and enthusiastic man, and, being provoked by his wife, he never forgave her, and in consequence, they separated. Later, the idea of

spinning by rollers was communicated to him, and he at once set about the construction of a machine to carry the idea into practice, but, after completing and exhibiting it, he was compelled to change his residence, on account of the ignorant hostility of the people in the town. He went, accordingly, to Nottingham, where he applied to some of the local bankers for pecuniary assistance, and the Messrs. Wright consented to advance him a sum of money, on condition of sharing in the profits of the invention. The machine, however, not being perfected as soon as they had anticipated, the bankers recommended Arkwright to apply to Messrs. Strutt and Need, the former of whom was the ingenious inventor and patentee of the stocking frame. Mr. Strutt was quick to perceive the merits of the invention, and a partnership was entered into with Arkwright, whose road to fortune was now clear. The patent was secured in the name of "Richard Arkwright of Nottingham, clockmaker;" and it is a remarkable fact that it was taken out in 1769, the very same year in which Watt secured the patent for his steam-engine. A cotton-mill was first erected at Nottingham, driven by horses, and another was shortly after built on a much larger scale, at Cromford, in Derbyshire, turned by a water-wheel, from which circumstance the spinning-machine came to be called the water-frame.

Arkwright was a tremendous worker, and a man of marvelous energy, ardor, and application in business. At one period of his life he was usually engaged in the severe and continuous labors involved by the organization and conduct of his numerous manufactories, from four in the morning until nine at night.

At fifty years of age he set to work to learn English grammar, and to improve himself in writing and orthography. When he traveled, to save time, he went at great speed, drawn by four horses. Be it for good or for evil, Arkwright was the founder in England of the modern factory system.

Equally valuable is the example of the immortal Dr. Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination as a preventive of small-pox. This terrible disease had raged for a long time, and there seemed to be no way of arresting its violence. Jenner was a youth, pursuing his studies at Sudbury, when his attention was arrested by the casual observation, made by a country girl, who came to his master's shop for advice. The small-pox was mentioned, when the girl said: "I can't take that disease, for I have had cow-pox." The observation immediately riveted Jenner's attention, and he forthwith set about inquiring and making observations on the subject. His pro

fessional friends, to whom he mentioned his views as to the prophylactic virtues of cow-pox, laughed at him, and even threatened to expel him from their society, if he persisted in harassing them with the subject. In London he was so fortunate as to study under John Hunter, to whom he communicated his views. The advice of the great anatomist was thoroughly characteristic: "Don't think, but try; be patient; be accurate." Jenner's courage was greatly supported by the advice, which conveyed to him the true art of philosophical investigation. He went back to the country to practice his profession, and carefully to make observations and experiments, which he continued to pursue for a period of twenty

years. His faith in his discovery was so implicit that he vaccinated his own son on three several occasions. At length he published his views in a quarto of about seventy pages, in which he gave the details of twentythree cases of successful vaccination of individuals, to whom it was found afterward impossible to communicate the small-pox, either by contagion or inoculation. It was in 1798 that this treatise was published, though he had been working out his ideas as long before as 1775, when they began to assume a definite form.

How was the discovery received? First with indifference, then with active hostility. He proceeded to London, to exhibit to the profession the process of vaccination, and its successful results; but not a single doctor could be got to make a trial of it, and, after fruitlessly waiting for nearly three months, Jenner returned to his native village. He was even caricatured and abused for his attempt to "bestialize" his species by the introduction into their systems of diseased matter from the cow's udder. Cobbett was one of his most furious assailants. Vaccination was denounced from the pulpit as "diabolical." It was averred that vaccinated children became "ox-faced;" that abscesses broke out, to "indicate sprouting horns;" and that the countenance was gradually "transmitted into the visage of a cow, the voice into the bellowing of bulls." Vaccination, however, was a truth, and, notwithstanding the violence of the opposition, belief in it spread slowly. In one village, where a gentleman tried to introduce the practice, the first persons who permitted themselves to be vaccinated were absolutely pelted, and were driven into their houses, if they appeared out of doors. Two