In due time the boy was sent to the public school at Grantham. That he might be near his work, he was boarded at the house of Mr. Clark, an apothecary. He had at first a very low place in the class. His first incentive to diligent study seems to have been derived from the circumstance that he was severely kicked by one of the boys above him in the class. This indignity had the effect of stimulating young Newton’s activity to such an extent that he not only attained the desired object of passing over the head of the boy who had maltreated him, but continued to rise until he became the head of the school. The play-hours of the great philosopher were devoted to pursuits very different from those of most schoolboys. His chief amusement was found in making mechanical toys, and various ingenious contrivances. He watched, day by day, with great interest, the workmen engaged in constructing a windmill in the neighborhood of the school, the result, of which was that the boy made a working model of the windmill and of its machinery, which seems to have been much admired as indicating his aptitude for mechanics. We are told that he also indulged in somewhat higher flights of mechanical enterprise. The first philosophical instrument he made was a clock, which was actuated by water. He also devoted much attention to the construction of paper kites, and his skill in this respect was highly appreciated by his schoolfellows. Like a true philosopher, even at this stage, he experimented on the best methods of attaching the string, and on the proportions which the tail ought to have. When the schoolboy at Grantham was fourteen years of age, it was thought necessary to recall him from the school. His recently-born industry had been such that he had already made good progress in his studies, and his mother hoped that he would now lay aside his books, and those silent meditations to which, even at this early age, he had become addicted. It was hoped that instead of such pursuits, which were deemed quite useless, the boy would enter busily into the duties of the farm and the details of a country life. But before long it became manifest that the study of nature and the pursuit of knowledge had such a fascination for the youth that he could give little attention to aught else. It was plain that he would make but an indifferent farmer. He greatly preferred experimenting on water-wheels, and working at mathematics in the shadow of a hedge. Fortunately for humanity, his mother, like a wise woman, determined to let her boy’s genius have the scope which it required. He was accordingly sent back to Grantham school, with the object of being trained in the knowledge which would fit him for entering the University of Cambridge.