not invested his spare cash in lenses,
brass tubes, eyepieces, specula and other such trifles, and stood most
of the night out on the lawn peering at the sky.

He had been studying stars for seven years before the Bath that he
amused awoke to the fact that there was a genius among them. And this
genius was not the idolized Beau Nash whose statue adorned the
Pump-Room! No, it was the man whose back they saw at the concerts.

During all these years Herschel had worked alone, and he had scarcely
ever mentioned the subject of astronomy with any one save his sister.

One night, however, he had moved his telescope into the middle of the
street to get away from the shadows of the houses. A doctor who had been
out to answer a midnight call stopped at the unusual sight and asked if
he might look through the instrument.

Permission was courteously granted. The next day the doctor called on
the astronomer to thank him for the privilege of looking through a
better telescope than his own. The doctor was Sir William Watson, an
amateur astronomer and all-round scientist, and member of the Royal
Society of London.

Herschel had held himself high--he had not gossiped of his work with the
populace, cheapening his thought by diluting it for cheap people. Watson
saw that Herschel, working alone, isolated, had surpassed the schools.

There is a nugget of wisdom in Ibsen's remark, "The strongest man is he
who stands alone," and Kipling's paraphrase, "He travels the fastest who
travels alone."

The chance acquaintance of Herschel and Watson soon ripened into a very
warm friendship.

Herschel amused the neurotics, Watson dosed and blistered them--both for
a consideration. Each had a beautiful contempt for the society they
served. Watson's father was of the purple, while Herschel's was of the
people, but both men belonged to the aristocracy of intellect. Watson
introduced Herschel into the select scientific circle of London, where
his fine reserve and dignity made their due impress. Herschel's first
paper to the Royal Society, presented by Doctor Watson, was on the
periodical star in Collo Ceti. The members of the Society, always very
jealous and suspicious of outsiders, saw they had a thinker to deal
with.

Some one carried the news to Bath--a great astronomer was now among
them! About this time Horace Walpole said, "Mr. Herschel will content me
if, instead of a million worlds, he can discover me thirteen colonies
well inhabited by