obligations I owe you." The visit of congratulation
paid to his partner Roebuck, was delightful. Now were all their griefs
"in the deep bosom of the ocean buried" by this recent success. Already
they saw fortunes in their hands, so brightly shone the sun these few
but happy days. But the old song has its lesson:

"I've seen the morning the gay hills adorning,
I've seen it storming before the close of day."

Instead of instant success, trying days and years were still before
them. A patent was decided upon, a matter of course and almost of
formality in our day, but far from this at that time, when it was
considered monopolistic and was highly unpopular on that account. Watt
went to Berwick-on-Tweed to make the required declaration before a
Master in Chancery. In August, 1768, we find him in London about the
patent, where he became so utterly wearied with the delays, and so
provoked with the enormous fees required to protect the invention, that
he wrote his wife in a most despairing mood. She administered the right
medicine in reply, "I beg you will not make yourself uneasy though
things do not succeed as you wish. If the engine will not do, something
else will; never despair." Happy man whose wife is his best doctor. From
the very summit of elation, to which he had been raised by the success
of the model, Watt was suddenly cast down into the valley of despair to
find that only half of his heavy task was done, and the hill of
difficulty still loomed before. Reaction took place, and the fine brain,
so long strained to utmost tension, refused at intervals to work at high
pressure. He became subject to recurring fits of despondency,
aggravated, if not primarily caused by anxiety for his family, who could
not be maintained unless he engaged in work yielding prompt returns.

We may here mention one of his lifelong traits, which revealed itself at
times. Watt was no man of affairs. Business was distasteful to him. As
he once wrote his partner, Boulton, he "would rather face a loaded
cannon than settle a disputed account or make a bargain." Monetary
matters were his special aversion. For any other form of annoyance,
danger or responsibility, he had the lion heart. Pecuniary
responsibility was his bogey of the dark closet. He writes that,
"Solomon said that in the increase of knowledge there is increase of
sorrow: if he had substituted _business_ for knowledge it would have
been perfectly true."

Roebuck shines out b