to scale? That drawing is a complete plan and
elevation of an ice-boat, drawn accurately to scale." He looked
thoughtful. "I don't understand it. You ought to take up with drafting,
my boy, when you get a little older. I never knew of a case like it.
What does your father do?" he suddenly asked.

"He's an ice-dealer,"[1] replied the discomfited boy. "I just made
it--that's all. We need it, too, to go ahead." Turning to his playmate,
"Come on out, Jack; the gang is waiting."

Which terminated the interview.

Yet the thing was the beginning of a career for the boy. The boat in
time somehow got itself built and out upon the little river; but owing
to the fact that its materials were stolen, the river failed to freeze
over that winter, and for three winters following--not till the boat
itself had fallen apart from disuse and lack of care--which points its
own moral, as hinted at above. If you must build ice-boats, and you are
a kid with mechanical yearnings, pay for the material that goes into the
making of your product. But the thing--as I say--was the beginning of a
career for the lad. In time, through the kindly office of his playmate's
father, he became apprenticed in a drafting-room of a large
manufacturing-plant--and the rest was easy. In his first year, on paper,
he devised a steam-engine with novel arrangement of slide-valves, and
thereafter for years designed engines and machinery about the country,
always quite successfully.

The successful engineer, while possessed of certain spiritual
characteristics, must also--if I may be so bold as to say so--be
possessed of certain physical characteristics. One of these is large,
and what is known as capable, hands. Short, spatulate fingers, with a
broad palm, appear to be a feature of the successful engineer. Of
course, there are exceptions, as there are exceptions to every rule, but
in the majority of cases which have come under the writer's observation
the successful engineer has had hands of this shaping. He likewise has
had wrists and arms to match with such hands, and--in the practical
engineer--that is, the engineer whose particular gift is coping with
ordinary problems of construction, as against the genius who blazes new
trails, like Watt and Westinghouse and Edison and Marconi and the Wright
brothers--a head whose contour was along the "well-shaped" lines. The
so-called genius usually has an odd-shaped head, I've noticed, but for
purposes of this book we shall