MacDowell in his earlier years as a scientist traveled about the country a great deal. His tours brought him to Youngstown three or four times a year. He always called me over the ’phone soon after his arrival and as speedily as I could leave my work, I would hurry to his hotel bedroom, where I would find him working, always working, with the strange instruments he had invented. I enjoyed intensely these talks with the quiet, wonderful man. No one, by looking at his kindly face, would have thought of him as being above the average in intellect and achievement. Little could they dream that he was the greatest scientist of all time. There was no pretense in him. Sandy Scotch hair rode stridently above a sandy Scotch face. But, different from those of most Scotchmen, his lips were spread in an almost perpetual half-smile of forgiveness and condonement. The human race was hardly to be understood in its small achievement by this man so lonely in his genius--so far in the vanguard of science that he marched a lone soldier--often the victim of wounds inflicted by his comrades at the rear, even ranking officers of science with epaulets and medals of honor bestowed upon them by an appreciative public. The human race was hardly to be understood by him, but with his half-smile he forgave its sins of commission and omission. “I have found a mordant,” he announced one time. The fact was of no immediate interest to me. I knew the name “mordant” was given to a substance which would fix a dye on cloth and give it a permanency of color that would baffle the effects of many washings and the bleaching rays of sunlight. Other significance I could not as yet realize. “You can help me in testing it,” he stated. I was ready, for, having helped him in many of his tests, my sympathy with his work made me faithful even at times when the experiments failed to achieve the results he anticipated. His thoughtful face took on a quizzical look. “If you realized the import of what I am saying you would not lie back in your chair in such evident boredom. Many have sought what I have been seeking.” He paused and eyed me curiously. “My mordant is equivalent to a draught from the fountain of youth.” I leaned forward in my chair. Here was a great story. I knew from past experience that I could not use it--could not, though my words be winged by fire, get it past the conservatism of the city editor’s desk, but nevertheless, my whole being throbbed to cadences of exaltation. Few know the fire that sings through the veins of a reporter when something new is made accessible to him. “But how--what is it--have you?” My words tumbled forth breathlessly upon one another. Then calming myself I asked, half-sarcastically, “Has the object of Ponce de Leon’s search been found?”