Isaac’s playmates were enchanted with his new windmill.  They thought that nothing so pretty, and so wonderful, had ever been seen in the whole world.

“But, Isaac,” said one of them, “you have forgotten one thing that belongs to a mill.”

“What is that?” asked Isaac; for he supposed, that, from the roof of the mill to its foundation, he had forgotten nothing.

“Why, where is the miller?” said his friend.

“That is true!—­I must look out for one,” said Isaac; and he set himself to consider how the deficiency should be supplied.

He might easily have made the miniature figure of a man; but then it would not have been able to move about, and perform the duties of a miller.  As Captain Lemuel Gulliver had not yet discovered the island of Lilliput, Isaac did not know that there were little men in the world, whose size was just suited to his windmill.  It so happened, however, that a mouse had just been caught in the trap; and, as no other miller could be found, Mr. Mouse was appointed to that important office.  The new miller made a very respectable appearance in his dark gray coat.  To be sure, he had not a very good character for honesty, and was suspected of sometimes stealing a portion of the grain which was given him to grind.  But perhaps some two-legged millers are quite as dishonest as this small quadruped.

As Isaac grew older, it was found that he had far more important matters in his mind than the manufacture of toys, like the little windmill.  All day long, if left to himself, he was either absorbed in thought, or engaged in some book of mathematics, or natural philosophy.  At night, I think it probable, he looked up with reverential curiosity to the stars, and wondered whether they were worlds, like our own,—­and how great was their distance from the earth,—­and what was the power that kept them in their courses.  Perhaps, even so early in life, Isaac Newton felt a presentiment that he should be able, hereafter, to answer all these questions.

When Isaac was fourteen years old, his mother’s second husband being now dead, she wished her son to leave school, and assist her in managing the farm at Woolsthorpe.  For a year or two, therefore, he tried to turn his attention to farming.  But his mind was so bent on becoming a scholar, that his mother sent him back to school, and afterwards to the University of Cambridge.

I have now finished my anecdotes of Isaac Newton’s boyhood.  My story would be far too long, were I to mention all the splendid discoveries which he made, after he came to be a man.  He was the first that found out the nature of Light; for, before his day, nobody could tell what the sunshine was composed of.  You remember, I suppose, the story of an apple’s falling on his head, and thus leading him to discover the force of gravitation, which keeps the heavenly bodies in their courses.  When he had once got hold of this idea, he never permitted his mind to rest, until he had searched out all the laws, by which the planets are guided through the sky.  This he did as thoroughly as if he had gone up among the stars, and tracked them in their orbits.  The boy had found out the mechanism of a windmill; the man explained to his fellow-men the mechanism of the universe.