In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thoughts and action. There was another and still more important reason for my late awakening. Just to illustrate, I may mention one or two instances. The humorous remarks he made were always peculiar and characteristic. He penned sentences short and terse and full of wit and satire. He often remarked playfully that if some of the classics were lost he could restore them. He had a prodigious memory and frequently recited at length from works in several languages. He was a very erudite man, a veritable natural philosopher, poet and writer and his sermons were said to be as eloquent as those of Abraham a-Sancta-Clara. He was the son of an officer who served in the army of the Great Napoleon and in common with his brother, professor of mathematics in a prominent institution, had received a military education but singularly enough, later embraced the clergy in which vocation he achieved eminence. I longed to be an engineer, but my father was inflexible. Then again, I was intended from my very birth for the clerical profession and this thought constantly oppressed me.

But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labor, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. Speaking for myself, I have already had more than my full measure of this exquisite enjoyment so much, that for many years my life was little short of continuous rapture. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. It is the most important product of his creative brain. The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.

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