Humboldt studied hard, held official positions, and matured. His mother died in 1796. To her this son owed much, for the father had died when Alexander was only ten years old, and she watched his education with fidelity. She saw the bent of the "little apothecary,"—as Alexander was called because of his passion for collecting and labeling shells, plants, and insects,—and guided it. Her death set Humboldt free to go afar in travels. In June, 1799, he started on a five years' absence, in which time he climbed Teneriffe and the Cordilleras, explored the Orinoco, visited the United States, and gathered a mass of knowledge which afterward won him lasting fame. Often he was in peril, often baffled, often put to dreary discomforts by savage tribes; but through all ran his unconquerable purpose.
In his scientific work he often took great risks in order to ascertain facts, as all earnest investigators do. In testing a new lamp for miners, he crept into a "crosscut" of the mine, lamp in hand, and continued there so long and persistently that two men rushed in and drew him out by the feet, the gases having overcome him.
We have not space to give details of his splendid career. Humboldt shone with greater light from year to year. Honors were lavished upon him. His works aided science, his life was a constant inspiration. He lived to be ninety years old, dying in 1859,—possessing to the last, a strong memory, and a tireless love of research.
[Footnote: On Humboldt, consult Haym's "Biography of Humboldt" (London, 1856); Bruhn's "Biography of Humboldt" (Leipsic, 1872, translated by the Misses Lassell); Klenke's "Alexander Von Humboldt" (1859); "Humboldt's Correspondence with Goethe" (London, 1876).]
IX.
THE FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD.
MEMORY GEMS.
The child is father of the man.—Wordsworth
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.—Chesterfield
No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.—Emerson