think, thirty-two dollars a
year for instruction, and occasionally buying acids and retorts, glass
tubing, bell-glasses, flasks, etc., I had to cut down expenses for
board now and then to half a dollar a week.

One winter I taught school ten miles south of Madison, earning
much-needed money at the rate of twenty dollars a month, "boarding
round," and keeping up my University work by studying at night. As I
was not then well enough off to own a watch, I used one of my hickory
clocks, not only for keeping time, but for starting the school fire in
the cold mornings, and regulating class-times. I carried it out on my
shoulder to the old log schoolhouse, and set it to work on a little
shelf nailed to one of the knotty, bulging logs. The winter was very
cold, and I had to go to the schoolhouse and start the fire about
eight o'clock to warm it before the arrival of the scholars. This was
a rather trying job, and one that my clock might easily be made to do.
Therefore, after supper one evening I told the head of the family with
whom I was boarding that if he would give me a candle I would go back
to the schoolhouse and make arrangements for lighting the fire at
eight o'clock, without my having to be present until time to open the
school at nine. He said, "Oh! young man, you have some curious things
in the school-room, but I don't think you can do that." I said, "Oh,
yes! It's easy," and in hardly more than an hour the simple job was
completed. I had only to place a teaspoonful of powdered chlorate of
potash and sugar on the stove-hearth near a few shavings and kindling,
and at the required time make the clock, through a simple arrangement,
touch the inflammable mixture with a drop of sulphuric acid. Every
evening after school was dismissed, I shoveled out what was left of
the fire into the snow, put in a little kindling, filled up the big
box stove with heavy oak wood, placed the lighting arrangement on the
hearth, and set the clock to drop the acid at the hour of eight; all
this requiring only a few minutes.

The first morning after I had made this simple arrangement I invited
the doubting farmer to watch the old squat schoolhouse from a window
that overlooked it, to see if a good smoke did not rise from the
stovepipe. Sure enough, on the minute, he saw a tall column curling
gracefully up through the frosty air, but instead of congratulating me
on my success he solemnly shook his head and said in a hollow,
lugubrious voice,