we cannot but feel a national pride--yet wonder--that a mere yankee boy,
surrounded by the deepest forests, hundred of miles from the populous
portion of our country, without the necessary materials, or resources
for procuring them, should by the force of his natural genius make
a discovery, and put it in practical use, to accomplish which,
the most learned philosophers of Europe, with every requisite apparatus,
and a profound knowledge of chemistry--spent years of toil to accomplish.
How much more latent talent may now be slumbering from the very same cause
which kept Mr. Wattles from publicly revealing his discoveries, viz;
want of encouragement--ridicule!

At the time when the idea of taking pictures permanently on paper by
means of the camera-obscura first occurred to him, he was but sixteen
years of age, and under the instructions of Mr. Charles Le Seuer,
(a talented artist from Paris) at the New Harmony school, Indiana.
Drawing and painting being the natural bent of his mind, be was
frequently employed by the professors to make landscape sketches
in the manner mentioned. The beauty of the image of these landscapes
produced on the paper in the camera-obscura, caused him to pause
and admire them with all the ardor of a young artist, and wish
that by some means, he could fix them there in all their beauty.
From wishing he brought himself to think that it was not only possible
but actually capable of accomplishment and from thinking it could,
he resolved it should be done.

He was, however, wholly ignorant of even the first principles
of chemistry, and natural philosophy, and all the knowledge he was
enabled to obtain from his teachers was of very little service to him.
To add to this, whenever he mentioned his hopes to his parents,
they laughed at him, and bade him attend to his studies and let