He was born December 25, the only child of Isaac Newton and Hannah Ayscough. The father died at thirty-seven, a few months after his marriage, and the young wife, after the birth of her child, was both father and mother to the helpless infant. He was so frail that there seemed little probability that he could live to manhood, or even boyhood. Naturally, between mother and son there grew a most ardent affection, which neither time nor death could change. The manor-house of Woolsthorpe in Colsterworth, Lincoln county, was a two-story stone building, owned for a century by the Newton family, and bringing a limited income from the little farm in connection with it. Here Isaac passed his childhood, going to the schools near by, and learning to read, write, and cipher. At twelve, he was sent to the public school at Grantham, where he showed little taste for study, and managed easily to stand at the foot of his class. When he was the last in the lowermost form but one, the boy next above him, as they were going to school, gave Isaac a kick, which occasioned severe pain. Stirred with wrath, Isaac challenged the other boy to a fight. For this purpose, they repaired to a neighboring churchyard, where young Newton, though much the smaller and weaker of the two, pounded his antagonist till he was glad to come to any terms of submission. He resolved now that this boy should no longer stand above him in scholarship, and with a new ambition and energy born of his insult, he soon rose to the highest place in the school. It was not idleness, probably, that made Newton a poor scholar, but his mind was absorbed with making saws, hammers, hatchets, and other tools. He made a windmill and placed it on the top of his home, the wind putting it in motion. When there was no wind, a novel expedient was resorted to. A mouse, which was called "the miller," was trained to turn the windmill by walking on a tread wheel, with some corn just beyond his reach! All through life, he was exceedingly kind to animals, and could never tolerate shooting or hunting for sport. He objected to one of his nephews, when praised in his presence, "that he loved killing of birds," and this was sufficient to win his disesteem. It is probable, therefore, that the little mouse was kindly cared for by the young experimenter. He also made a water clock, about four feet high, with a dial-plate at the top, with figures of the hours. The index was turned by a piece of wood, which either fell or rose by water dropping. Every morning the lad supplied his clock with the proper amount of water. Besides these, he invented a four-wheeled carriage, which was moved with a handle by the person who sat in it. For his boy friends, he made lanterns of "crimpled paper" with a candle inside, to light them to school in the dark winter mornings, and paper kites of the best form and proportion. In dark nights he tied the lanterns to the tails of his kites, and ignorant people sometimes mistook them for comets!