early life and triumphed over it.

The astronomer Kepler, whose name can never die, was kept in constant
anxieties; and he told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood, saying
that astrology, as the daughter of astronomy, ought to keep her mother.
All sorts of service he had to accept; he made almanacs and worked for
any one who would pay him.

Linnæus was so poor when getting his education that he had to mend his
shoes with folded paper, and often had to beg his meals of his friends.

During the ten years in which he made his greatest discoveries, Isaac
Newton could hardly pay two shillings a week to the Royal Society of
which he was a member. Some of his friends wanted to get him excused
from this payment, but he would not allow them to act.

Humphry Davy had but a slender chance to acquire great scientific
knowledge, yet he had true mettle in him, and he made even old pans,
kettles, and bottles contribute to his success, as he experimented and
studied in the attic of the apothecary store where he worked.

George Stephenson was one of eight children whose parents were so poor
that all lived in a single room. George had to watch cows for a
neighbor, but he managed to get time to make engines of clay, with
hemlock sticks for pipes. At seventeen he had charge of an engine, with
his father for fireman. He could neither read nor write, but the engine
was his teacher, and he a faithful student. While the other hands were
playing games or loafing in liquor shops during the holidays, George was
taking his machine to pieces, cleaning it, studying it, and making
experiments in engines. When he had become famous as a great inventor of