ins are to be here
tomorrow to see the prodigy. The velocity, violence, magnitude,
and horrible noise of the engine give universal satisfaction to
all beholders, believers or not. I have once or twice trimmed
the engine to end the stroke gracefully and to make less noise,
but Mr. Wilson cannot sleep without it seems quite furious, so I
have left it to the enginemen; and, by the by, the noise seems
to convey great ideas of its power to the ignorant, who seem to
be no more taken with modest merit in an engine than in a man.

Well said, modest, reserved philosopher with vast horse-power in that
big head of yours, working in the closet noiselessly, driving deep but
silently into the bosom of nature's secrets, pumping her deepest mines,
discovering and bringing to the surface the genius which lay in steam to
do your bidding and revolutionise life on earth! In this, the first
triumph, there was recompense for all the trials Watt and his wife had
endured in Cornwall.

Readers will note that no workman had yet been developed who could be
trusted to erect the engine. The master inventor had to go himself as
the mechanical genius certain to cure all defects and ensure success.
This shows how indispensable Watt was.

Orders now flowed in, and Watt was needed to prepare the plans and
drawings, no one being capable of relieving him of this. To-day we have
draftsmen by the thousand to whom it would be easy routine work, as we
have thousands to whom the erection of the Watt engine would be play.
Watt was everywhere. At length he had to confess that "a very little
more of this hurrying and vexation would knock me up altogether." At
this moment he had just been called to return to Cornwall to erect the
second engine. He says "I fancy I must be cut in pieces and a portion
sent to every tribe in Israel." We may picture him reciting in
Falstaffian mood, "Would my name were not so terrible to the enemy
(deep-mine water) as it is. There can't a drowned-out mine peep its head
out but I'm thrust upon it. Well, well, it always was the trick of my
countrymen to make a good thing too common. Better rust to death than be
scoured to nothing by this perpetual motion."

Watt had a hard time of it in Cornwall during his next stay there, for
he had to go again. He arrives at Redruth to find many troubles.

Forbes' eduction-pipe is a vile job, he writes, and full of
holes. The cylinder they have cast for Chac