To young Henry, aged eleven, New York was an exciting and stimulating place and he watched all its activities with eager interest. The father found the city stimulating in a different way. An enthusiastic Universalist, he met in New York many persons with similar leanings. He soon established a religious weekly, _The Gospel Herald_, which he edited for several years. It is therefore not surprising that young Henry was set to learning the printer’s trade, but although he rapidly became skilled, he didn’t especially like the trade. What he most enjoyed about it was tinkering with the machinery of the shop. In this his mechanical ability soon became evident. When his father relinquished his editorship, Henry, then nineteen, gladly turned to different work. He chose locksmithing, which he learned speedily and well in the shop of William Day of New York. The years 1830 to 1839 found him travelling between New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans, following the activities of the building trades and trying by long hours and austere living to save money for a locksmith shop of his own. For the sake of both health and pocketbook, he never rode if he could walk, neither drank nor smoked, ate little meat, and lived chiefly on graham bread and water. [Illustration: FIGURE 6.—Henry Fitz, from a photograph in the collections of the U.S. National Museum. (_Smithsonian photo 44594-b_)] Evenings were spent in reading, study, and the pursuit of hobbies, chief of which was astronomy. His diaries and letters of this period show him buying telescopes and lenses and carrying them with him on his travels. He first made a telescope in 1838, a reflector, with which he delighted to show the stars and planets to his friends. The well-known Reverend Clapp of New Orleans referred to him in a public address as “the young locksmith who knew more about the heavenly bodies than anyone else in the United States.” Henry was pleased with this compliment, even while deprecating the enthusiasm which prompted it. [Illustration: FIGURE 7.—Certificate of award to Henry Fitz, Jr., by the American Institute, 1852, “For the best achromatic telescope.” (_Smithsonian photo 46815-a_)] [Illustration: FIGURE 8.—Advertisement of Henry Fitz, about 1850. (_Smithsonian photo 44594-a_)] [Illustration: FIGURE 9.—Refracting telescope, comet seeker, (USNM 317027) by Henry Fitz, 8¼-inch aperture, 61-inch tube, fitted for equatorial mounting. The stand is lacking. (_Smithsonian photo 46815_)] Although he saved money, his work did not bring him the financial or other rewards that he had hoped for. In spring of 1839 he appears to have worked as a speculum maker with Wolcott and others—one of them may have been his acquaintance John Johnson—and to have read of Daguerre’s work in photography. To learn more of these experiments, as well as to inquire into optics and optical glass, he sailed to Europe in August of that year, taking passage by steerage.