f good fellows who little guessed with whom they drank.

He also had "poor relations" come to visit him; and it is significant
that while there are various items showing where he lost money at cards,
there are no references to any money won at the same business, from
which we infer that while there was no one at Cambridge who could follow
him in his studies, there yet were those who could deal themselves
better hands when it came to the pasteboards.

Evidently he got discouraged at playing cards, for after the year
Sixteen Hundred Sixty-eight, there are no more items of "treating at the
tavern" or "lost at cards." The boys had tried to educate him, but had
not succeeded. In card exploitations he fell a victim of arrested
development.

I suppose it will not cause any one a shock to be told that "the
greatest thinker of all time" was not exactly a perfect man.

So let the truth be known that throughout his life Newton had a
well-defined strain of superstitious belief running through his
character. He never quite relinquished the idea of transmutation of
metals, and at times astrology was quite as interesting to him as
astronomy.

In writing to a friend who was about to pay a long visit to the mines of
Hungary, he says, "Examine most carefully and ascertain just how and
under what conditions Nature transforms iron into copper and copper into
silver and gold."

In his laboratory he had specimens of iron ore that contained copper,
and also samples of copper ore that contained gold, and from this he
argued that these metals were transmutable, and really in the act of
transmutation when the process was interfered with by the miner's pick.

He had transformed a liquid into a mass of solid crystals instantly, and
all of the changes possible in light, which he had discovered, had
enlarged his faith to a point where he declared, "Nothing is
impossible."

It is somewhat curious that Isaac Newton, who had no soft sex-sentiment
in his nature, quite unlike Galileo, still believed in alchemy and
astrology, while Galileo's cold intellect at once perceived the fallacy
of these things.

Galileo also saw at once that for the sun to stand still at Joshua's
command would really mean that the Earth must cease her motion, since
the object desired was to prolong the day. Sir Isaac Newton, who
discovered the Law of Gravitation, yet believed that at the command of a
barbaric chieftain, this Law was arrested, and that all planetary
att