Of Ericsson's home life there is not much to be told. He was utterly wrapped up in his work. With his devoted secretary, Mr. Arthur Taylor, his days knew scarcely any variation. Of social recreation he had none. In conversation he was abrupt and somewhat peculiar, apparently regarding all other talk than that relating to mechanics and germane subjects as a waste of words. His shrewd face, with its blue eyes and fringe of white hair, was not an unkindly one, however, and the few workmen he employed in the Beach Street house were devoted to him. No great man was ever more intensely averse to personal notoriety. Although often advised to make his Destroyer better known by means of newspaper articles, he persistently refused to see newspaper men; and the professional interviewer and lion-hunter were his pet aversions. It was perhaps to avoid them that he left his house only after nightfall, and then but for a walk in the neighborhood. [Illustration: The Room in which Ericsson Worked for More than Twenty Years.] His time was divided according to rule. For thirty years he was called by his servant at seven o'clock in the morning, and took a bath of very cold water, ice being added to it in summer. After some gymnastic exercises came breakfast at nine o'clock, always of eggs, tea, and brown bread. His second and last meal of the day, dinner, never varied from chops or steak, some vegetables, and tea and brown bread again. Ice-water was the only luxury that he indulged in. He used tobacco in no form. During the daytime he was accustomed to work at his desk or drawing-table for about ten hours. After dinner he resumed work until ten, when he started out for the stroll of an hour or more, which always ended his day. The last desk work accomplished every day was to make a record in his diary, always exactly one page long. This diary is in Swedish and comprises more than fourteen thousand pages, thus covering a period of forty years, during which he omitted but twenty days, in 1856, when he had a finger crushed by machinery. He scarcely knew what sickness was, and just before his death said that he had not missed a meal for fifteen years. He was a widower and left no children. He died in the Beach Street house, after a short illness, on March 8, 1889, and his remains were transferred to Sweden with naval honors. [Illustration: Cyrus Hall McCormick.] VIII. CYRUS HALL McCORMICK.