Brought up as a millwright, Bell, from want of funds to start in business, was obliged for many years to gain his living as a common carpenter in Glasgow, where he was noted among the trade as being very fond of "schemes," and suspected on that account by narrow-minded folk of being not very reliable in the lower branches of his craft. Scheme after scheme issued from his fertile mind; but he was rash and hasty in working them out, and few proved of much worth. Steam navigation being one of the vexed problems of the time, had every fascination for his peculiar genius; and he seems to have been brooding over it as the last century was closing, and the present opening upon the world. When Fulton visited Symington's invention, Bell appears to have accompanied him, and to have afterwards corresponded with him on the subject. "This," he says, "led me to think of the absurdity of writing my opinions to other countries, and not putting it in practice myself in my own country; and from these considerations I was roused to set on foot a steamboat, for which I made a number of different models before I was satisfied." Having removed to the little village of Helensburgh, on the banks of the Clyde, and there established a hotel and bath-house, which his wife managed, he endeavoured to work the passage-boats by which visitors were brought to the place, by means of paddle-wheels worked by the hand, instead of oars; but the plan did not succeed very well, for the same reason that led to Mr. Miller's abandonment of it--the inefficiency of manual power, which could not be applied with sufficiently sustained and continuous force. He therefore gave it up, and turned his attention to the employment of steam power for the same purpose. Of course, he was laughed at for his pains; and Henry Bell's project for having steamers on the Clyde became a standing joke among the frequenters of the watering-place. Even after the permanent success of Fulton's scheme was known, people would not moderate their incredulity; but Bell's faith, which had never wavered, was now confirmed, and he set about the work with redoubled energy.