animated the forces. Every man was doing the particular part of the work that was necessary to make it a success. No chief of any enterprise ever commanded an army that was so loyal, so faithful, that gave its strength and its blood to the successful completion of its task as did the canal forces. And so in accepting the medal and thanking those who confer it, I accept it and thank them in the name of every member of the canal army.”

Since the completion of the canal, its master-builder has been called to serve his country in more than one great crisis. At the time of the threatened railroad strike in the fall of 1916, he was made chairman of the commission of three appointed by President Wilson to investigate the working of the eight-hour law for train operators, which was the subject of dispute between the managers of the roads and the men who ran the freight-trains. In March, 1917, he was selected by Governor Edge of New Jersey to serve as advisory engineer on the construction of the new fifteen-million-dollar highway system of that State.

A SHEPHERD OF “THE GREAT COUNTRY”: BISHOP ROWE

HAVE you heard the story of Offero, the mighty giant of Canaan, who made a vow never to serve any master but the most powerful of all the rulers of earth?

“As my strength is great, so shall my service be great,” he said, “and my king must be one who stands in fear of no man.”

He wandered over all lands, looking in vain for the greatest monarch, for each king plainly stood in dread of some other power. At length, however, he was told by a holy hermit that the King of kings was an invisible Lord who reigned through love in the hearts of men.

“How can I serve him?” asked Offero.

“You must fast and pray,” answered the hermit.

“Nay,” cried Offero, “not so! For I should then lose my strength which is all that I have to bring to his service.”

For a moment the holy hermit prayed silently to be given wisdom. Then his face shone as if from a light within.

“There is a river over which many poor people must cross,” he said, “and there is no bridge. The current is often so swift and treacherous at the ford that even the strongest are swept from their feet and lost. With your great strength you could help one and all to safety. It would be a work of love—meet service for the Lord of Love.”

And so Offero, the giant, built him a little hut by the side of the stream and dwelt there all his days, lending his strength to all who needed it in the name of the unseen King whom he served. It is said that one night in a wild storm a little child came praying to be carried across. Now, for the first time, Offero knew what weakness and faltering meant. He staggered and all but fell in the foaming current.

“Oh, little child,” he cried out as he stumbled, panting and spent, to the farther bank, “never before have I borne such a weight! I felt as if I were carrying the whole world on my shoulders!”

“And well you might, strong one,” said the child, “for you have this night carried the Master whom you serve. Henceforth your name shall be not Offero but Christopher, which means one who has carried Christ.”

And the good giant was called Saint Christopher from that day. You have perhaps seen pictures of him, for more than one great artist has tried to paint the story of his faithful service of love.

We are going to hear to-day the story of a strong man of our own time, who, like Offero of old, vowed to serve with his strength the greatest Master of all—the King of kings. The tale of his life began November 20, 1856, when Peter Trimble Rowe was born in Toronto, Canada. He was a tall, sturdy lad, who early learned to laugh at cold weather and strenuous days in the open. The more wintry it was without, the more glowing the warmth within his hardy, alert body. If you had met him as he returned from a holiday afternoon spent on snow-shoes, your pulses would have throbbed in sympathy with his happy, tingling vigor. You would have felt as if you had “warmed both hands before the fire of life.”

He had bright Irish eyes, a ready Irish laugh, and the merry heart that belongs with them. His heart was, moreover, as warm as it was glad. He laughed with people, not at them; and he had a quick understanding of their troubles and difficulties as well as of the fun that lay near the surface of things. This means that his heart caught the beat of other hearts, and that he early learned the lessons that love alone can teach.

It was while he was still a student that he decided what his life work must be. “Man cannot live by bread alone”—these words had a very vital meaning for him. There were many in the world, he knew, who spent all their days struggling for bread, as if that alone could satisfy their longing for life. Very simply he said to himself: “I must use my strength to help where help is most needed. I must go to the far-off, frontier places where people live and die without light and without hope.”

As soon as he had graduated from Trinity College, Toronto, and was ordained a minister of the church, he went as missionary to an Indian tribe on the northern shore of Lake Huron. In caring for this wild, neglected flock the young shepherd needed all his splendid, vigorous health and hardihood. He went around in summer drought and winter storm, often sleeping by a camp-fire or in an Indian wigwam, in order that he might bring the light of a new hope into the dark lives of these first Americans.

“The Indians have learned little good from the white men or from civilization,” he said ruefully. “They have acquired some of our weaknesses and diseases—that is about all.”

He longed to bring to them in exchange for the old free life in their vast forests and broad prairie country, a new freedom of the spirit that should enable them to understand and use the good things in the white man’s world. Do you think that he tried to do this through preaching? He really did not preach at all. He lived with the people and talked to them as a friend who was ready to share what he had with others on the same trail.

Do you remember Emerson’s much-quoted challenge?—“My dear sir, what you are speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you are saying.” What a person is will always be heard above what he says. In the case of Mr. Rowe, the strong, self-reliant, sympathetic, kindly spirit of the man ever talked with a direct appeal to his people. He tramped and hunted, canoed and fished with them, and shared with them the fortunes of the day around the evening camp-fire. No one had a cheerier word or a heartier laugh. They were ready to hear all that he had to tell them of the things that make life happier and better, and of the Master he served, who loved his red children no less than the white.

When the work was well under way on the Indian reservation, the young man accepted the call to a new field at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Here he had again the challenge and inspiration of pioneer work. There were six members of his church when he took charge; when, ten years later, he left his flock to another pastor it numbered two hundred and fifty. He had, moreover, pushed out into the surrounding country and established missions at several different points. He was sure that his strength and endurance, his power to conquer cold, fatigue, and other unfriendly conditions, should be used in the greatest cause of all—in going “to seek and save those that are lost” in the wild places of the earth.

“I love battling with wind and weather and pulling against the stream,” he used to say. “I was born tough, and it’s only common sense to put such natural toughness to some real use.”

So it was that, like Saint Christopher, he was resolved to serve his King with his strength.

In 1895, when a bishop was wanted to take charge of the great unexplored field of all Alaska—scattered white men who had gone there for fish, furs, or gold; Indian tribes in the vast, trackless interior; and Eskimos in the far North within the Arctic Circle—people said without hesitation, “Mr. Rowe is the man to go as shepherd to that country.”

A bishop, you know, is an “overseer,” one who is responsible for the welfare of the people of a certain district or diocese, as it is called. He is a sort of first shepherd, who has general charge of all the flocks (churches and missions), and who tries to provide for those that are without care. The man to undertake this work in Alaska would have to be one of the hardy, patient explorer-missionaries, like Father Marquette, who in 1673 traveled in a birch canoe through the Great Lakes and along the Mississippi, ministering to the Indians and making a trail through the New World wilderness.

Alaska is an Indian word which means “the Great Country.” It is, indeed, not one but many lands. Most people think of it as a wild, snow-covered waste, whose arctic climate has been braved by white men only for the sake of its salmon, seals, and later for the gold that was found hidden away in its frost-locked soil. The country along the Pacific coast is warmed by the Japan current just as the British Isles are by the Gulf Stream, and its climate is milder in winter and cooler in summer than that of New England. It is a land of wonderful, inspiring beauty, with lordly, snow-crowned mountain peaks; forests of enchanting greenness bordering clear, deep fiords; and fields bright with poppies, bluebells, wild roses, and other flowers of the most vivid coloring. The interior, through which flows the Yukon, that great highway of Alaska, is much colder, but it is only the northern portion reaching into the Polar Sea that has the frigid conditions that many people associate with “the Great Country.”

When in early April, Bishop Rowe took the steamer from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska, he found that two hundred of his fellow passengers were bound for the newly discovered gold fields. Many of them were fine, rugged fellows who loved strenuous endeavor better than easy, uneventful days. Some few of them were “rolling stones” of the sort that would make trouble anywhere.

“When I looked forward to what might be done for the lonely settlers and forlorn natives in Alaska,” said Bishop Rowe, “I did not at first realize that an important part of the work would be with the great army of gold-seekers who suddenly find themselves in the midst of hardships, disappointments, and temptations that they have never known before.”

Of course the men on board were anxious to learn everything they could about the “Great Country.” Each person who had been to Alaska before was surrounded by a group of eager questioners.

“It is the richest country on God’s earth,” declared a merchant. “There are no such hauls of salmon and halibut anywhere else. Why, the fisheries alone are worth more in one year than the paltry sum of $7,200,000 that we paid Russia for Alaska. And think how the people in America made fun of Seward for urging the purchase. Said it was fit for nothing but a polar bear picnic grounds.”

“Wasn’t it hinted that the United States was paying Russia in that way for her friendship during the Civil War—by offering to take a frozen white elephant off her hands and giving her a few million dollars into the bargain?” asked another.

“Yes,” rejoined a man who was evidently a hunter, “and we’re just beginning to wake up to the bargain we have. I’ve been there before for the sport—bear, moose, caribou. You never knew such a happy hunting ground for the chap who goes in for big game. But now I’m for the gold fields. And, believe me, I’ve the start of you other fellows in knowing what I’m up against. There are no Pullman sleepers where we are going, let me tell you. We’ll have to make our own trails over snow-covered mountains, across glaciers, and through cañons, but the prize is there, boys, for those who have the grit to win out.”

“You talk about knowing Alaska,” put in another, scornfully, “and you see there nothing but fish, big game, and the chance to find some of the yellow dust that drives men mad. It’s a fairer land than you have ever even dreamed of, with greener pines and nobler fiords than Norway can show, and mountains more sublime than the Alps. Do you know it’s a country that will feed a people and give them homes where the air is fresh and fragrant with snow, sunshine, and flowers? You hunters and fishers and prospectors who go to Alaska just to make money and then run away to spend it, make me tired. You look upon that magnificent country—white man’s country, if there ever was such—as nothing but so much loot.”

“You fellows remind me of the story of the blind men and the elephant,” said Bishop Rowe, with his hearty laugh. “You remember how one felt a tusk and said the creature was just like a spear, while the one who touched the side said it was a wall, and the last beggar who chanced to get hold of the tail said it was like a rope. There is evidently more than one Alaska, and each one knows only the country that he has seen. We shall soon see for ourselves—what we shall see.”

Of all the men who landed at Juneau, Bishop Rowe was in a sense the only real Alaskan, for he alone intended to make his home in the country. Even the man who had called it “white man’s country” was going there in the character of tourist-reporter to take away impressions of its marvelous scenery; its inspiring contrasts of gleaming, snow-capped peaks and emerald watersides vivid with many-colored blossoms; its picturesque Indian villages with their grotesque totem poles; its gold “diggings” with their soldiers of fortune.

Everybody was busy getting together the necessary outfit for the journey on the trail across the coast range to the Yukon, along which the adventurers made their way to Circle

City, a mining center eight hundred and fifty miles from Juneau.

On April 22, the bishop, with one companion, left the seaport for his first journey in the land of his adoption. Sometimes he was climbing steep mountains where he had to dig out with his stick a foothold for each step; sometimes he was walking through narrow cañons not more than twelve or fourteen feet in width, where overhanging rocks and snow slides threatened to crush him; sometimes he was creeping along the edge of cliffs so high and sheer that he dared not trust himself to look down; sometimes he was treading warily over the frozen crust of a stream whose waters seethed and roared ominously beneath the icy bridge.

As he pushed on, hauling his heavy sled (it weighed, with the camping outfit and provisions, four hundred and fifty pounds), you can imagine that he had an appetite for his dinner of toasted bacon and steaming beans. Sometimes his gun would bring down a wild duck to vary this hearty fare.

He knew what it was, however, to be too tired to eat or sleep. That was when he was felling trees and whipsawing the logs into boards for a boat. The men who had promised to furnish him with transportation as soon as the ice was broken up had not kept their agreement, and he faced the open season with no means of continuing his journey.

“If you’ll just camp here with us fellows for a spell, comrade,” said the men in whose company he found himself at Carabou Crossing, “we’ll all pitch in and give you a day’s help when we’ve got our own lumber sawed.”

Then the good-natured miners had a shock of genuine surprise. The preacher whom they proposed to pull out of his difficulty proved that he was neither a tenderfoot nor a shirker.

“I think I’ll see what I can do for myself before I ask you men to come to the rescue,” he said.

The blows of his ax resounded merrily as he put himself to his task. Then after the logs were rolled on the saw-pit he whipped out the lumber in something less than two days. When night came his muscles ached but his pulses sang.

“What a friend a tree is!” he said, smiling happily at the leaping, crackling flames. “Here it is giving us a rousing fire and boughs for our beds, as well as lumber for our boats and gum and pitch to make them watertight.”

The rude but plucky little craft was finished and mounted on runners to take it to the place of launching before those who had volunteered to help him had their own lumber sawed. The rough men were much impressed. This missionary who was not above sharing their toil and hardships must have a message that was worth hearing. They gathered about him with respectful attention when he said:

“We’re hundreds of miles from a church here, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t feel the need of one, does it? Let’s have a service together about the camp-fire before we go on our way.”

The firelight shone on softened faces and earnest eyes as the gold seekers sat gazing up at the man who spoke to them simply and fearlessly of the treasures of the spirit which he that seeks will be sure to find.

“You men have given up comfort and friends and risked life itself to find your golden treasure,” he said. “Some of you may win the prize you seek; many more may be doomed to disappointment. Will you not take with you something that will make you strong to bear either the temptations of success or the trials of failure? It is yours for the asking; only reach out your hand and you will touch it.

As Bishop Rowe talked, his hearers seemed to lean on his words as naturally as one leans on a trusty staff when the way is rough and steep. And when he had gone, much that he had said lingered with them through the feverish rush forward and the long desolate winter that followed, when the cracking ice and the howling wolves alone broke the awful stillness about their remote camp.

The steadfast faith and the cheerful endurance of our pioneer missionary were tried more than once as he drew his boat, which weighed with the load of provisions some 1400 pounds, over the frozen surface of a chain of lakes where he had to exercise ceaseless vigilance to avoid bad ice. Then there were three days of ice breaking after the spring thaw was well under way before he could begin to paddle with the stream.

It was now the pleasantest time of the year—the time of the long days when you can almost see the grasses and flowers shoot up as they take advantage of every moment of life-giving sunshine. The warm wind brought the smell of clover and the voice of leaping water-falls. It seemed as if one could taste the air; it was so fresh with the pure snow of the heights and so golden-sweet with sunshine and opening blossoms.

The paddler on the Yukon, however, cannot become too absorbed in the beauties by the way. There are dangerous rapids and unexpected cross currents that require a steady head and a strong hand, and the new bishop frequently had reason to be grateful for the skill in canoeing that he had won in his camping days in Canada.

If he had been out for game he would have found more than one opportunity for a good shot. There were brown bears looking at him from the brush along the banks, and bears fishing for salmon in the swift water. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of an antlered moose among the trees, and now and then he saw an eagle swoop down to seize a leaping fish in its claws. Flocks of ducks with their funny, featherless broods scurried over the water, disturbed by the sudden appearance of the canoe.

The bishop visited the Indian villages along the stream, as well as the missions that had been planted at various points to minister to the natives. Imagine what his cheering presence meant to the lonely workers in the wilderness. As he went along he was planning how best he might meet the needs of the people with new missions, hospitals, and schools.

“Why is it that all you tough, rough-riding Alaskan fellows set such store by this Bishop Rowe?” a man from Fairbanks was asked.

“Well, for one thing his works have not been in words but in deeds,” was the reply. “Let me tell you how it was with us when he came over the ice from Circle City in the winter of 1903. He looked us over and saw the thing we most needed. He saw no dollars, either in sight or in the future. He saw only that a poor lot of human creatures, up against a dead-hard proposition, needed a hospital. ‘You have the ground,’ said he; ‘you raise half the money and I will leave the other half for the building. Then I will take care of the nurses, medicines, and everything else you need.’ Of course he is for his church, but he and his church are always for their people—and their people are any that fare over the trail.”

It was soon said of this master missionary that he was “the best musher in Alaska,” “Mush!” or “Mush on!” is the cry that the men on the winter trails give to their dog teams. It is, perhaps, a corruption of the French word marchons, which means “Go on!” There is seldom a winter when Bishop Rowe does not travel from one to two thousand miles with his team of six huskies to visit his people.

Do you picture him sitting comfortably wrapped in fur robes on the sledge while the dogs pull him as well as the store of food for the six weeks’ journey on which he is bound? Look again! There he is walking on snow-shoes ahead of the team leader; he is “breaking trail” for the dogs who have all they can do to drag the laden sled. In order to lighten their load he selects a tree at each camping-place to serve as a landmark, and hides there a store of food for the return trip.

“That is a plan that works well unless the sly wolverines manage to get on the scent of the cache,” he said. “But you must go as light as possible when you travel over a waste of snow, and are forced at times to cover forty miles a day. It is a trip that takes all the unnecessary fat off you; and you get as strong as a mule and as hungry as a bear.”

You would think that the mountain climbing, canoeing, and marching on snow-shoes which are part of his yearly round would be all that he could possibly need to take off the “unnecessary fat” and keep him in the “pink of training.” The winter trip with the dog sledge, however, brings many situations when life itself depends upon one’s physical fitness. In preparation for those journeys, the bishop goes through a regular series of exercises—long distance running, hill-climbing, and even jumping rope. The following extract from one of his diaries kept during a six weeks’ trip over the Arctic waste when mountains and valleys alike were muffled in a white silence, and all the streams were voiceless, spell-bound rivers of ice, will show what making the rounds in the diocese of all Alaska means:

A worker in a lonely frontier post where there were plentiful discouragements once said: “When I am tempted to think that I am having a hard time I just think of Bishop Rowe. Then I realize that it is possible to feel that creature comforts are not matters of first importance. How splendidly he proves that a man can rise above circumstances, and still march on and laugh on no matter what may be happening about him or to him!”

We have seen how the Bishop of Alaska fares in winter when the world is a vast whiteness save only for the heaving dark of the sea; when the avalanches are booming on the mountains; when the winds are sweeping through the cañons, and all the air is filled with ice-dust. What can he accomplish through these journeys that he should forego all comfort and risk life itself?

First, he brings light and cheer to the homesick miners—to the dull-eyed, discouraged men who have struggled and toiled without success, and to the excited, watchful ones who fear to lose what they have won.

“Where are all the people going?” asked a stranger in Fairbanks one Sunday.

“Bishop Rowe is here,” replied the hotel clerk smilingly. “Everybody turns out when he comes to town. You see,” he added thoughtfully, “he somehow knows what a man needs no matter where he is or what he is. There is something that goes home to each one who listens.”

But the adventurers from civilization are not the bishop’s chief care. His first thought is for the Indians and Eskimos, who, if they have gained somewhat, have suffered much through the coming of the white men to their shores.

“Our people have for the most part been consistently engaged in plundering Alaska,” he said. “We have grown rich on its salmon and furs, while the natives who formerly had plenty feel the pinch of famine and cold. We take from the country everything we can get and even make the Indians pay a tax on the trees they cut down; but we do nothing for the land in the way of building roads and bridges, or for the people in the way of protecting them from the evils that the coming of the white men has brought upon them.”

In so far as it lies in his power, the bishop tries to atone for this despoiling of Alaska by working whole-heartedly for the natives—teaching them more wholesome ways of living, giving them food and medicine in times of distress, providing sawmills to give them work, introducing reindeer to supply clothing in the place of the seals that are fast disappearing, and building churches, schools, and hospitals. He has, besides, gone to Washington and described to the President and the lawmakers the pitiable state of the Alaskan Indians, and pleaded for reservations where they could first of all be taught how to maintain health under the new conditions of life that have been forced upon them, and then given suitable industrial training and the chance of earning a livelihood. The laws that have been passed to secure fair play for the original Alaskans have been won largely through the persistent and effective championship of Bishop Rowe.

See him as he journeys down the Yukon in a scow loaded with lumber for a mission building. He has with him just one helper and three little Indian children whom he is taking to a school at Anvik. At night he is at the bow, watching to guard against the dangers of the stream. Sometimes the children wake up and cry when a great slide from the bank—tons on tons of rock and earth—shoots into the river with a terrific boom. Sometimes, when the hooting of an owl or the wail of a wild beast pierces the stillness they huddle together, too frightened to make a sound. Then the good bishop stoops over and pats them on the head kindly, saying a comforting word or two which reminds them that nothing can possibly harm them while he is near.

A storm of rain and wind that lasts all night and all the next day drenches them through and through. The children, who are wet and cold, creep close to their friend. “Etah, etah” (my father), they say, looking up at him pitifully. In a flash he remembers that not far off is a deserted log cabin which he chanced to find on a previous journey. Making a landing, they follow him along the bank and at nightfall reach the blessed shelter. Here they build a rousing fire and dry their clothes. As they sit about the blazing logs they fancy that all the sunbeams that had shone upon the growing tree are dancing merrily in the flames. The next morning the sun comes out as if to make up for all the stormy days and nights that have ever vexed weary travelers, and they go on their way with renewed courage.

“The two qualities most needed in Alaska,” said Bishop Rowe, “are an instinct for finding one’s way, and bulldog grit.” He certainly has these two requisites, as well as “animate faith and love.” Wherever he goes—to remote Indian villages or Eskimo igloos; to deserted mining centers whose numbers have dwindled from thousands to a forlorn score; to thriving cities like Sitka, Nome, and Fairbanks, which have electric lights, telephones, and many of the luxuries as well as the comforts of civilization—he brings a message of hope. To those who hunger without knowing what they lack, he brings the Bread of Life—the glad tidings of a God of love.

In 1907, it was decided to transfer Bishop Rowe from his frontier post to Colorado. “You have served faithfully where the laborers are few and the hardships are many,” it was said. “You must now guard your powers for a long life of service.”

“I appreciate with deep gratitude the kindness,” replied the missionary bishop, “but I feel that in view of present conditions I must decline the honor of the transfer and continue in Alaska, God helping me.”

So the Shepherd of “the Great Country” is faithful to his charge and his flock, asking not a lighter task but rather greater strength for the work that is his. Like the giant-saint of the legend, he serves with his might the unseen King who reigns through love in the hearts of men.

A HERO OF FLIGHT: SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

A BOY was lying on his back in a clover-sweet pasture, looking up dreamily at the white clouds that were drifting about on the calm blue sea of the sky. The field sloped down to the beach, and the salt breath of the ocean came to him on the passing breeze. All at once his eye was caught by something that made him start up suddenly, all alert attention. It was a sea-gull rising into the air, its wings flashing white in the bright sunshine.

“How does he do it?” he said aloud. “How is it that he can float about like that without any effort? It is just when he begins to mount into the air that he flaps his wings; now he is hardly moving them at all. He seems to be held up by the air just as a kite is!”

This was not the first time that young Samuel Langley had watched the flight of the sea-gulls. And the sight of a hawk circling above the tree-tops could always set him a-staring.

“There must be something about the air that makes it easy,” he pondered. “The birds know the secret, but I can’t even guess it!”

That night at dinner the boy was more than usually thoughtful.

“Father,” he said after a long silence, “don’t you think it might be possible for people to make some sort of an airship thing to sail through the air, without any gas bag to carry it up?”

“Have you heard that there is such a thing as the law of gravity, son?” quizzed the father, banteringly. “What goes up must come down, you know.”

“But, Father,” the boy persisted, “the hawks and gulls are much heavier than the air. There is nothing of the balloon sort about them.”

“But they have wings, my boy, and they know how to fly,” returned Mr. Langley, looking at the lad’s puckered brow with amused indulgence.

“Well, Father,” retorted Sam, flushing under the teasing smiles that were directed at him, “I’m sure it’s not such a joke after all. Why shouldn’t people learn how to make wings and to fly?”

“Come down to earth, Samuel, and don’t get too far from the ground in your wonderings,” advised his father. “There are enough problems on the good old earth to keep you busy. Your idea has not even the merit of being new and original. The myths of Greece tell us that ‘way back in the legendary past people envied the flight of birds. But all those who have tried to do the trick have, like Icarus who went too near the sun with his marvelous wax wings, come back to earth rather too abruptly for comfort.”

As the days went by, Samuel Langley did indeed turn his attention to other questions, but the problem suggested by the bird’s flight was not forgotten. Years afterward when he had become one of the most distinguished scientists of his time he used often to say: “Knowledge begins in wonder. Set a child to wondering and you have put him on the road to understanding.”

He often liked to recall the days of his boyhood when he had first set his feet on the path that led to the great interests which made his life.

“There are two incidents—little chance happenings, you might call them, if you believe in chance—” he said, “which took root and grew with the years. One was my discovery of the fascinations of my father’s telescope. I remember watching the workmen lay the stones of Bunker Hill Monument through that glass. It taught me the joy of bringing far-away things into intimate nearness. I learned that the man who knows how to use the magic glasses of science can say, ‘Far or forgot to me is near!’ ”

The great scientist smiled musingly to himself; he seemed to have slipped away from his friend and the talk of the moment. Was he back in his boyhood when he first looked at the moon’s face through his magic glass, or was he pondering over some new problem concerning sun spots which was puzzling learned astronomers the world over?

“What was the other incident you spoke of, Professor?” reminded his companion timidly, for it was not easy to get Dr. Langley to speak about himself, and the spell of this rare hour might easily be broken.

“What is it?—oh, yes,” he went on, picking up the thread, “the other epoch-making time of my young life was the lazy hour when I lay stretched out in an open field watching the flight of the hawks and gulls circling overhead. I noted that their wings were motionless except when they turned them at a different angle to meet a new current of wind. I began then dimly to suspect that the invisible ocean of the air was an unknown realm of marvelous possibilities. It may be that that idle holiday afternoon had more to do with the serious work of the after years than the plodding hours devoted to Latin grammar.”

Samuel Langley had a mind of the wondering—not the wandering—sort. Everything that he saw set him to questioning, comparing, and reasoning. When he noticed the curious way in which nature has made many creatures so like the place in which they live that they can easily hide from their enemies, he said to himself: “It is strange that the insects which live in trees are green, while those that live on the ground are brown. It must be that the ones who were not so luckily colored were quickly picked off, and that only those that can hide in this clever way are able to hold their own.” When he noticed that brightly colored flowers were not so fragrant as white ones, he said, “The sweet blossoms don’t need gay colors to attract their insect friends.” When he saw early spring vegetables growing in a hotbed, he said: “How does that loose covering keep them warm? There must be something that makes heat under there.” Years later he said, “I believe the questions that I kept putting to myself every time I went by a certain garden not far from our house marked the starting-point of my investigations into the work of the sun’s rays in heating the earth. The day came when the idea flashed upon me that the air surrounding our planet acts just like a hotbed, conserving enough warmth to make possible the conditions of life we require.”

Everything in Samuel Langley’s world—animals, plants, rocks, air, and water—had its wonder story and its challenge. There was always some question to be puzzled over. Science was not, however, the only passion of his early years. His delight in beauty was just as keen as his thirst for knowledge. He noted with loving appreciation the changing lights and shades of Nature’s face. He had an eye for “the look of things,” which means that he had something of a gift for drawing.

After completing the course of the Boston High School, he turned his attention to civil engineering and architecture. “I did not go to college because I had to think about paying my own way through life,” he said, “and I argued that a chap who was fond of mathematics and drawing should be able to do some good work in the way of building even if he did not succeed in laying the foundation of either fame or fortune. Besides, it seemed to me that while doing work that was not uninteresting, I should be near the things that were already part of my life; there would be chance and encouragement for further scientific study.”

Going to Chicago when he was twenty-three years of age, Mr. Langley worked for seven years in his chosen profession, gaining in addition to a comfortable income, practical business experience and unusual skill in drafting. All this time his interest in scientific problems was pulling him away from the beaten path of practical achievement. His intellect was of the hardy, pioneer sort that longs to press on where man has never ventured—to make new paths, not to follow in the footsteps of others.

In 1864 the young scientist of thirty years determined upon a bold move. He definitely retired from his profession, returned to New England, and for three years devoted his time to building telescopes. He knew something of the magician’s joy as he planned and developed the special features of his “magic glasses.” The boy who had thrilled over the marvels of the starry heavens which his father’s telescope had revealed was alive within him, exulting to find that he could construct instruments many times more powerful.

“I have never outgrown my love of fairy books,” he said. “To one who spends his time with the wonders that science reveals, the immortal wonder tales of childhood seem truer than any other stories. I delight in the adventures of the youth who had found the cap of invisibility; then I turn to my telescope which brings the invisible into the world that the eye knows. Children and men of science belong to the same realm; no one else has the proper appreciation of true magic.”

After his close work with the telescopes, this lover of marvels spent a happy year in Europe, visiting observatories, museums, and art galleries. It was at this time that he decided that astronomy was to be the serious business of his days, and art the chief delight of his hours of recreation. He was offered the place of assistant in the Harvard Observatory by Professor Winlock, in spite of the fact that he had had no university training.

“This self-made astronomer has a seeing eye, a careful hand, and the instinct for observation,” said Joseph Winlock approvingly. “Besides he has, if I am not mistaken, the imagination to use in a large and constructive way the facts that his experiments yield. He has the making of an original scientist.”

His feet once planted on the first round of the ladder of expert knowledge, advancement was rapid. It might well seem to many passing strange that a man who had written nothing, discovered nothing, and who, moreover, had no brilliant university record behind him, should at once win recognition from the most learned specialists of the day.

“What was there about Langley that earned his rapid promotions?” it was asked.

“There was nothing that remotely hinted at influence or favoritism,” said one who knew him well. “He was impersonal and retiring to a degree. But he had in rare combination an open, alert mind and a capacity for hard work.”

After two years at the Harvard Observatory, he went to the Naval Academy at Annapolis as professor of mathematics and director of the observatory. A year later he accepted the professorship of astronomy and physics in the Western University at Pittsburg. For twenty years he filled this position and also that of director of the Allegheny Observatory, which under his leadership became the center of very important work.

When he took charge at the new observatory, he found no apparatus for scientific observations beyond a telescope, and no funds available for the purchase of the absolutely necessary instruments. How was he to obtain the expensive tools which he required for his work?

“If I can show the practical importance of astronomical observations, the means will be forthcoming,” he said.

At this moment a wonderful inspiration came to the professor. In traveling about the country he had been strongly impressed with the need of some standard system of keeping time. He believed that science ought to be able to come to the rescue and bring order out of confusion.

“This is my chance,” he now said, as he looked about his empty observatory. “If I can prove to the managers of the Pennsylvania Railroad that I can furnish them with a time-keeping system that will do away with the inconvenience of changing time with every forty or fifty miles of travel and all the troublesome reckonings and adjustments which that entails, I feel assured that they will provide the equipment which I need.”

It often happens that the learned masters of science are entirely removed in their interests and experience from the every-day world of business. They work in a sphere apart, and the offices of some practical middleman with an inventive turn of mind are required to make their discoveries of any immediate value. Professor Langley, on the contrary, had an appreciation of the demands of business, as well as the vital interests of science. He had lived in both worlds. Now, through his competent grasp of the needs of such a railroad center as Pittsburg, where the East and the West meet, he succeeded in working out a plan that was so sane and practical that it immediately recommended itself to the busy men in control of transportation problems. His observatory was provided with the apparatus for which he longed, and twice a day it automatically flashed out through signals, the exact time to all the stations on the Pennsylvania Railroad, a system controlling some eight thousand miles of lines. To Professor Langley, more than to any other person is due the effective regulation of standard time throughout the country.

During the years of hard work at Pittsburg, Professor Langley was invited to join several important scientific expeditions. These were the holidays of his busy life. His efficient work as leader of a coast survey party to Kentucky in 1869 to observe an eclipse of the sun won for him the opportunity to join the government expedition to Spain to study the eclipse of 1870. In the summer of 1878, he took a party of scientists to Pike’s Peak, and that winter he went to Mt. Etna for some further experiments on the heights. An article called “Wintering on Mount Etna,” which appeared in the “Atlantic Monthly,” proved that he could not only do important work in original research but that he could also write about it in a way calculated to appeal to the average reader.

During these years Professor Langley devoted a great deal of time and thought to astrophysics. This science, which is sometimes called “the new astronomy,” is concerned with special heat and light problems of the heavenly bodies—more especially, of course, with investigations and measurements of the radiant energy of the sun. To carry on his experiments he invented a wonderful electrical instrument called the bolometer, which is so delicately constructed for measuring heat that when one draws near to look at it the warmth of his face has a perceptible effect.

Professor Langley’s tests proved that the lantern of the fire-fly gives a cheaper form of light than is to be found anywhere else. Here Nature has demonstrated the possibility of providing illumination with no waste of energy in heat or in any other way. All the force goes into the light, while man’s devices for defeating darkness waste as much as ninety-nine per cent. of the energy consumed.

The Pittsburg years were rich in the joy of work well done, but they gave little of the inspiration and stimulus that comes from congenial companionship. For the most part, he had to content himself with the society of his book friends. The number of his solitary hours may be to a certain extent measured by the astonishing range of his reading.

“Why, Mr. Langley, I do believe you have read every book that ever was written!” said an admiring young lady on one occasion.