Sir Isaac Newton
2. Isaac's father being dead, Mrs. Newton was married again to a clergyman and went to live at North Witham. Her son was left to the care of his good old grandmother, who was very kind to him and sent him to school.
3. In his early years Isaac did not appear to be a very bright scholar, but was chiefly remarkable for his ingenuity. He had a set of little tools and saws of various sizes, manufactured by himself. With the aid of these Isaac made many curious articles, at which he worked with so much skill that he seemed to have been born with a saw or chisel in hand.
4. The neighbors looked with admiration at the things which Isaac manufactured. And his old grandmother, I suppose, was never weary of talking about him.
"He'll make a capital workman one of these days," she would probably say. "No fear but what Isaac will do well in the world and be a rich man before he dies."
5. It is amusing to conjecture what were the expectations of his grandmother and the neighbors about Isaac's future life. Some of them, perhaps, fancied that he would make beautiful furniture. Others probably thought that little Isaac would be an architect, and would build splendid houses, and churches with the tallest steeples that had ever been seen in England.
6. Some of his friends, no doubt, advised Isaac's grandmother to apprentice him to a clock-maker; for, besides his mechanical skill, the boy seemed to have a taste for mathematics, which would be very useful to him in that profession.
7. And then, in due time, Isaac would set up for himself, and would manufacture curious clocks like those that contain sets of dancing figures which come from the dial-plate when the hour is struck; or like those where a ship sails across the face of the clock and is seen tossing up and down on the waves as often as the pendulum vibrates.
8. Indeed, there was some ground for supposing that Isaac would devote himself to the manufacture of clocks, since he had already made one of a kind which nobody had ever heard of before. It was set a-going, not by wheels and weights like other clocks, but by the dropping of water.