On reaching manhood,
they had each come into property sufficient to make violent exertion
superfluous. Gordon Wright, indeed, had inherited a large estate. Their
wants being tolerably modest, they had not been tempted to strive for
the glory of building up commercial fortunes--the most obvious career
open to young Americans. They had, indeed, embraced no career at all,
and if summoned to give an account of themselves would, perhaps, have
found it hard to tell any very impressive story. Gordon Wright was much
interested in physical science, and had ideas of his own on what is
called the endowment of research. His ideas had taken a practical
shape, and he had distributed money very freely among the investigating
classes, after which he had gone to spend a couple of years in Germany,
supposing it to be the land of laboratories. Here we find him at
present, cultivating relations with several learned bodies and promoting
the study of various tough branches of human knowledge, by paying the
expenses of difficult experiments. The experiments, it must be added,
were often of his own making, and he must have the honor of whatever
brilliancy attaches, in the estimation of the world, to such pursuits.
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