More and more the chemist is becoming the architect of his own fortunes.  He does not make discoveries by picking up a beaker and pouring into it a little from each bottle on the shelf to see what happens.  He generally knows what he is after, and he generally gets it, although he is still often baffled and occasionally happens on something quite unexpected and perhaps more valuable than what he was looking for.  Columbus was looking for India when he ran into an obstacle that proved to be America.  William Henry Perkin was looking for quinine when he blundered into that rich and undiscovered country, the aniline dyes.  William Henry was a queer boy.  He had rather listen to a chemistry lecture than eat.  When he was attending the City of London School at the age of thirteen there was an extra course of lectures on chemistry given at the noon recess, so he skipped his lunch to take them in.  Hearing that a German chemist named Hofmann had opened a laboratory in the Royal College of London he headed for that.  Hofmann obviously had no fear of forcing the young intellect prematurely.  He perhaps had never heard that “the tender petals of the adolescent mind must be allowed to open slowly.”  He admitted young Perkin at the age of fifteen and started him on research at the end of his second year.  An American student nowadays thinks he is lucky if he gets started on his research five years older than Perkin.  Now if Hofmann had studied pedagogical psychology he would have been informed that nothing chills the ardor of the adolescent mind like being set at tasks too great for its powers.  If he had heard this and believed it, he would not have allowed Perkin to spend two years in fruitless endeavors to isolate phenanthrene from coal tar and to prepare artificial quinine—­and in that case Perkin would never have discovered the aniline dyes.  But Perkin, so far from being discouraged, set up a private laboratory so he could work over-time.  While working here during the Easter vacation of 1856—­the date is as well worth remembering as 1066—­he was oxidizing some aniline oil when he got what chemists most detest, a black, tarry mass instead of nice, clean crystals.  When he went to wash this out with alcohol he was surprised to find that it gave a beautiful purple solution.  This was “mauve,” the first of the aniline dyes.

The funny thing about it was that when Perkin tried to repeat the experiment with purer aniline he could not get his color.  It was because he was working with impure chemicals, with aniline containing a little toluidine, that he discovered mauve.  It was, as I said, a lucky accident.  But it was not accidental that the accident happened to the young fellow who spent his noonings and vacations at the study of chemistry.  A man may not find what he is looking for, but he never finds anything unless he is looking for something.