t
having succeeded in this, his widow still persisted in the same object,
though without success. He did, however, make several steam-engines
besides the one at Raglan Castle; engines which did actually answer the
purpose of raising water from considerable depths in a continuous
stream. He also erected near London a steam fountain, which he
describes.

During the next century several important improvements were made in the
steam-engine, but without rendering it anything like the useful agent
which we now possess. When James Watt began to experiment, about the
year 1760, in his little shop near the Glasgow University, the
steam-engine was still used only for pumping water, and he soon
discovered that it wasted three fourths of the steam. He once related to
a friend how the idea of his great improvement, that of saving the waste
by a condenser, occurred to his mind. He was then a poor mechanic living
upon fourteen shillings a week.

"I had gone to take a walk," he said, "on a fine Sabbath afternoon. I
had entered the Green by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street, and
had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the
time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into
my mind that, as steam was an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum,
and, if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted
vessel, it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without
cooling the cylinder."

He had found it! Before he had crossed the Green, he added, "the whole
thing was arranged in my mind." Since that memorable day the invention
has been ever growing; for, as Professor Thurston well remarks: "Great
inventions are never the work of any one mind." From Hero to Corliss is
a stretch of nearly twenty centuries; during which, probably, a thousand
inventive minds have contributed to make the steam-engine the exquisite
thing it is to-day.

AN OLD DRY-GOODS MERCHANT'S RECOLLECTIONS.

Our great cities have a new wonder of late years. I mean those immense
dry-goods stores which we see in Paris, London, New York, Vienna,
Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago, in which are displayed under one roof
almost all the things worn, or used for domestic purposes, by man,
woman, or child.

What a splendid and cheering spectacle the interior presents on a fine,
bright day! The counters a tossing sea of brilliant fabrics; crowds of
ladies moving in all directions; the clerks, well-dres