"But," answered Robert, "I came here, Sir, to have something beaten into my head, not into my knuckles."
Robert was keener on making things than on learning lessons. One morning he did not get to the schoolhouse until nearly noon, and Mr. Johnson exclaimed: "Now, Mr. Tardy-Boy, where have you been?"
"At Mr. Miller's shop, pounding out a lead for my pencil. I want you to look at it. It is the best one I ever had!" And the teacher had to admit that he never saw a better one.
Another time Robert told the Quaker teacher that he was so busy thinking up new ideas that he did not have any room in his mind for storing away what was in dusty books!
Robert loved pictures. There was a large portrait of his beautiful mother, painted by Benjamin West, which hung in the parlor, and he had often wished to try and make one like it. He had not been long at school before a seat-mate brought to school some paints and brushes belonging to an older brother. As the war was waging, the people had hard work to get luxuries or money to buy them with, so Robert quite envied the boy such a prize. He begged to try them, and he made such wonderful pictures, pictures so much better than any one else in school could make, that the owner gave the whole outfit to him.
About this time Robert was always buying little packages of quicksilver. He was trying experiments with it, but he wouldn't tell the other boys what they were. So they nicknamed him "Quicksilver Bob." Of course, the men in shops where firearms were made and repaired were very busy. "Quicksilver Bob" went to these shops every day. The men liked him, and as he talked with them, he often made suggestions that they were glad to follow. "That boy will do something big some of these days," they would say to each other.
When Robert was fourteen, he met a boy who worked in a machine shop, by the name of Christopher Grumpf. This boy was eighteen, and his father was a fine fisherman who knew where the largest number of fish could be caught, and he took the two boys up and down the river in a flat-bottomed boat that was pushed along by the means of two long poles. The boat was clumsy, and this poling made the boys' arms ache. Robert kept thinking there must be a better way of getting that boat through the water. He went away to visit his aunt but worked all the time on a set of paddles and the model of a boat on which they could be built. He tried a set of these paddles on Mr. Grumpf's boat when he got home, and they worked so well that Mr. Grumpf never used the poles again on his fishing trips. He found the paddles saved him from having lame muscles.
Robert and his playmates had fine times watching the two thousand troops stationed in Lancaster. These were British prisoners. Some of them were kept in the barracks, the officers lodged in private houses, and the Hessian troops (some of whom had their wives with them) lived in square huts of mud and sod. This colony of Hessians greatly interested the boys of the village, and Robert drew capital pictures of them, for he had been practising sketching and painting all his spare time. In fact, he decided, at the age of seventeen, to go to the city of Philadelphia and make a business of painting portraits and miniatures. For four years he lived there, earning a good deal of money and sending the greater part of it home to his mother.
Among the many pleasant friends he made in Philadelphia was Benjamin Franklin. Mr. Franklin and most of his wealthy patrons advised Robert to go to Europe and take painting lessons of Benjamin West. Before he went, Robert bought a farm for his mother and sisters. He never forgot to see that his mother was comfortable.
Robert had been thinking for years how fine it would be if boats did not have to depend on sails but could be sent through the water by steam. Over in Europe he met a lord who was making plans for canals, and while talking with him he grew more interested than ever in ways of traveling by water. So although he painted enough portraits to lay away money for a rainy day, he studied all the rules for building canals and about the machinery that goes in boats. Certainly he was busier than when, as a boy, he told Caleb Johnson there was no time for dusty books when his mind was holding so many new ideas, for he learned three or four languages, invented the first panorama ever shown in France, a machine for cutting marble, another for twisting rope, and a torpedo boat to be used in warfare.