daily occupation, when, one morning, a model of Newcomen's engine
was brought to him for repair, yet it marked the turning point in
his career, which ultimately led from poverty and struggle to fame
and affluence.

Watt's practiced eye at once perceived the defects in the Newcomen
engine, which, although the best then in existence could not do
much better or quicker work than horses. Filled with enthusiasm
over the plans which he had conceived for the construction of a
really powerful engine, he immediately set to work, and spent two
months in an old cellar, working on a model. "My whole thoughts
are bent on this machine," he wrote to a friend. "I can think of
nothing else."

So absorbed had he become in his new work that the old business of
making and mending instruments had declined. This was all the more
unfortunate as he was no longer struggling for himself alone. He
had fallen in love with, and married, his cousin, Margaret Miller,
who brought him the greatest happiness of his life. The neglect of
the only practical means of support he had reduced Watt and his
family to the direst poverty. More than once his health failed,
and often the brave spirit was almost broken, as when he exclaimed
in heaviness of heart, "Of all the things in the world, there is
nothing so foolish as inventing."

Five years had passed since the model of the Newcomen engine had
been sent to him for repair before he succeeded in securing a
patent on his own invention. Yet five more long years of bitter
drudgery, clutched in the grip of poverty, debt, and sickness, did
the brave inventor, sustained by the love and help of his noble