Lesson:

1. 'I will think of it.' It is easy to say this; but do you know what great things have come from thinking?


2. We cannot see our thoughts, or hear, or taste, or feel them; and yet what mighty power they have!


3. Sir Isaac Newton was seated in his garden on a summer's evening, when he saw an apple fall from a tree. He began to think, and, in trying to find out why the apple fell, discovered how the earth, sun, moon, and stars are kept in their places.


4. A boy named James Watt sat quietly by the fireside, watching the lid of the tea kettle as it moved up and down. He began to think; he wanted to find out why the steam in the kettle moved the heavy lid.


5. From that time he went on thinking and thinking; and when he became a man, he improved the steam engine so much that it could, with the greatest ease, do the work of many horses.


6. When you see a steamboat, a steam mill, or a locomotive, remember that it would never have been built if it had not been for the hard thinking of someone.


7. A man named Galileo was once standing in the cathedral of Pisa, when he saw a chandelier swaying to and fro.


8. This set him thinking, and it led to the invention of the pendulum.


9. James Ferguson was a poor Scotch shepherd boy. Once, seeing the inside of a watch, he was filled with wonder. 'Why should I not make a watch?' thought he.


10. But how was he to get the materials out of which to make the wheels and the mainspring? He soon found how to get them: he made the mainspring out of a piece of whalebone. He then made a wooden clock which kept good time.


11. He began, also, to copy pictures with a pen, and portraits with oil colors. In a few years, while still a small boy, he earned money enough to support his father.


12. When he became a man, he went to London to live. Some of the wisest men in England, and the king himself, used to attend his lectures. His motto was, 'I will think of it;' and he made his thoughts useful to himself and the world.


13. Children, when you have a difficult lesson to learn, don't feel discouraged, and ask someone to help you before helping yourselves. Think, and by thinking you will learn how to think to some purpose.