r
Robert F. Stockton, which crossed the Atlantic under canvas in 1839,
and was afterward employed as a tug-boat on the Delaware River for a
quarter of a century. Within ten years Ericsson patented thirty
inventions considered by him of sufficient importance to claim a
place in the list that in 1863 numbered one hundred.

A notable feature of the admirable work of Mr. Church is the
elucidation of the truth, so often overlooked, that events never
spring into being disjoined from antecedents leading to them. He
explains how the varied achievements of John Ericsson were
developed, showing with great force and in imperishable colors the
steps to his successes, and the help the famous engineer derived in
later life from the studies and experiments of his earlier career.
Mr. Church, as the literary executor of Ericsson, has had unrivalled
opportunities for examining the accumulation of data which throw
light all along the way, and while dealing with the masterly
engineering exploits of his subject, does not forget that he had a
human side, and presents him with all his hopes and fears and
failures, his aims, his obstacles, his courage, and his habits and
eccentricities. Ericsson certainly cherished a very high ideal, and
was free to an unusual extent from mercenary motives. His inventions
did not always pay; he found this a weary world for those who see
beyond their fellows. Some of his mechanical contrivances in common
use to-day dated so far back of the memory of any one living that
before he died he often learned that he was supposed to have copied
from others what he, in fact, originated himself or first brought
into use.

The barriers of tradition and prejudice had to be overcome with his
every new invention. The introduction of steam in any shape to the
English navy was sharply opposed. It is interesting to trace the
incidents, apparently without connection, which stand in orderly
relations one to another as essential parts of an intelligent
design. Ericsson was in America at the critical moment when all the
experiences of his previous life were to be brought into full play;
when he was to take part in an enterprise involving the existence of
a nation, the hopes of humanity. He was ready to meet the strain of
a demand to which no other living man was adequate. He was then
fifty-eight years of age, with the constitution and the vital forces
of a man of forty, and such experience in actual accomplishment as
few acquire