It is easier to give Mr. Maxim’s manner of speech than his manner of speaking. He has wonderful brown eyes,—very honest eyes,—that stare at you inquiringly as he talks, and an extremely gentle voice of an almost hypnotic quality,—very attractive and soothing. Marvelously quick-witted himself, he has little patience with dullness in others. His power of explanation, too, is very great. He always uses language and methods according to the understanding of the listener. With a scientific man, he employs forms of speech that convey much in little, while to the ordinary layman he expresses himself in popular English. “To what do you attribute your early success?” Mr. Maxim was asked. “In the first place, I was a very large and strong boy, and, no matter where I worked, I always succeeded in doing more than any other man or boy in the shop. I was never absent from work or school.” PAT’S ANXIETY TO TRY “THE BOSS,” AND ITS RESULT. The development of his physical strength kept pace with that of his intellect. When he was thirty-five, he was manager of a large manufactory in Brooklyn. One day a herculean Irishman, who had long been ambitious to have a trial of strength with “the boss,” asked the latter how it was that the Irish were so much stronger than the Americans. “How much can you lift?” asked Mr. Maxim, quietly. “Six hundred pounds,” replied Pat. “And how much do you weigh?” “Two hundred pounds.” “Well,” said Maxim, “I will lift you and your load together,” and he did it. HOW THE MAINE “BACKWOODSMAN” CAPTURED A ROBBER. On another occasion, while taking lunch at a railroad station in France, Mr. Maxim recognized a notorious confidence man who had, years before, robbed him in Paris. The fellow, seeing that he was detected, tried to escape by leaping upon a moving train. Maxim followed and a fierce struggle ensued on the footboard of the coach, while the train was running at a high speed. Maxim had to fight both the fellow and his comrades, but he subjugated his man. The train was brought to a standstill, and the victor marched his prisoner back over the ties to the station, delivering him to the authorities, and subsequently had the satisfaction of seeing him sentenced to several years at hard labor. This was one result of the backwoods training in Maine. “Whatever job I was at,” Mr. Maxim told me, “I used to work at and think of day and night. I talked shop in season and out. If I was given work that was not good enough for me, I would do it so well and so quickly that they thought I was worthy of something better. No matter where I was, I managed, somehow, to get to the top. I noticed, the first thing, that the majority of the men around me were poor and the few rich; and I knew, of course, that the methods of the former were wrong, and that, consequently, the way to succeed was to follow the latter.” “When did you first begin to invent?”