He was invited to play at a concert presided over by the Duke of Montebello, and this led to other profitable engagements.  But the great opportunity of his life came to him in Bologna.  The people had thronged to the opera house to hear Malibran.  She had disappointed them, and they were in no mood to be lenient to the unknown violinist who had the temerity to try to fill her place.

He came on the stage.  He bowed.  He grew pale under the cold gaze of the thousands of unsympathetic eyes turned upon him.  But the touch of his beloved violin gave him confidence.  Lovingly, tenderly, he drew the bow across the strings.  The coldly critical eyes no longer gazed at him.  The unsympathetic audience melted away.  He and his violin were one and alone.  In the hands of the great magician the instrument was more than human.  It talked; it laughed; it wept; it controlled the moods of men as the wind controls the sea.

The audience scarcely breathed.  Criticism was disarmed.  Malibran was forgotten.  The people were under the spell of the enchanter.  Orpheus had come again.  But suddenly the music ceased.  The spell was broken.  With a shock the audience returned to earth, and Ole Bull, restored to consciousness of his whereabouts by the storm of applause which shook the house, found himself famous forever.

His triumph was complete, but his work was not over, for the price of fame is ceaseless endeavor.  But the turning point had been passed.  He had seized the great opportunity for which his life had been a preparation, and it had placed him on the roll of the immortals.

THE LESSON OF THE TEAKETTLE

The teakettle was singing merrily over the fire; the good aunt was bustling round, on housewifely cares intent, and her little nephew sat dreamily gazing into the glowing blaze on the kitchen hearth.

Presently the teakettle ceased singing, and a column of steam came rushing from its pipe.  The boy started to his feet, raised the lid from the kettle, and peered in at the bubbling, boiling water, with a look of intense interest.  Then he rushed off for a teacup, and, holding it over the steam, eagerly watched the latter as it condensed and formed into tiny drops of water on the inside of the cup.

Returning from an upper room, whither her duties had called her, the thrifty aunt was shocked to find her nephew engaged in so profitless an occupation, and soundly scolded him for what she called his trifling.  The good lady little dreamed that James Watt was even then unconsciously studying the germ of the science by which he “transformed the steam engine from a mere toy into the most wonderful instrument which human industry has ever had at its command.”

This studious little Scottish lad, who, because too frail to go to school, had been taught at home, was very different from other boys.  When only six or seven years old, he would lie for hours on the hearth, in the little cottage at Greenock, near Glasgow, where he was born in 1736, drawing geometrical figures with pieces of colored chalk.  He loved, too, to gaze at the stars, and longed to solve their mysteries.  But his favorite pastime was to burrow among the ropes and sails and tackles in his father’s store, trying to find out how they were made and what purposes they served.