LEARNING TO THINK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8162, 25 January 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

LEARNING TO THINK.

Sir Isaac Newton, of Newton Centre, Mass., was one of the greatest thinkers that ever carried a thinker in his bootleg. Whatever he saw he endeavoured to find out a cause for it. But as he was thinking all the time he didn't see a great deal. One day, as he was sitting in the garden, oiling up his thinker, he saw an apple fall from a tree. Most men would have supposed that it fell of its own accord, but Sir Isaac had been a boy himself long before founding the theological seminary which perpetuates his name, which, by the way, is a very easy one to spell. He at once began to wonder what made the apple fall ; some foolish people say that he wondered why it didn't fall up instead of down, but that is all rubbish. Sir Isaac was no fool if he was a philosopher, and ho knew that everything falls down except a wig, and that false hair. After (pronounced awfter) much thought and study upon the subject he discovered the cause; he noticed that apple-; were more disposed to fall down after school was dismissed than during study hours. So the next time he went into the garden he lay low, and when the apple fell he held his breath until the cause came swiftly over the fence to pick up the effect. Sir Isaac collared the boy, for it was he, and taught him how easily pain might be produced by the rapid impingement of a common apple switch upon exposed or only partially protected portions of the human form divine. He illustrated his theory with a few simple experiments such as a boy of ordinary intelligence could easily comprehend. This valuable discovery of Sir Isaac's has been a great boon to grown-up humanity. It is now universally known that apples are more apt to fall when there are a few boys at large in the vicinity than at any other time, and that apples will fall for a boy when they might have defied the laws of gravitation for months longer. This sublime fact teaches us that modifications that are at first artificial are rendered spontaneous by heredity. The incident of the apple tree, however, had one bad effect upon Sir Isaac. It led him to hate boys, and he devoted much of his time to making life a burden to them. With this revengeful object in view he invented the attraction of gravitation, and by a joint resolution of Congress, widen he easily accomplished by persuading the members of the House that there was a big appropriation in it, he gob ib established as a fundamental law of nature, with jurisdiction over the tides, the seasons, and the movements of the planets, and many other things which boys have since been compelled to learn. So it is that whenever a boy sees an apple he thinks of Sir Isaac' Newton first, and then he thinks of some way to get the apple, and by-and-byo he wonders if ho can find the pain-killer in the dark, and then he thinks how awful it would be to die there, all alone, in the night, and then he thinks if he lives till morning he will give the rest of the apples to his little brother, and thus you see quite a train of thought is awakened in the boy's mind by Sir Isaac's great discovery. Sir Isaac never took out a patent on his discovery, but the Bell Telephone* ompany claims that the principle is covered by their invention and tho patents relating thereto ; and if the courts sustain this claim, as they probably will, every time a man picks up anything that has dropped down, ho will have to pay a royalty, and every time ho has anything to do with the telephone company he willl drop something. —R. J. Burdette.