sing by a magnet or an electrified wire, why would it not be possible to make a musical telegraph--a telegraph with a piano key-board, so that many messages could be sent at once over a single wire? Unknown to Bell, there were several dozen inven-tors then at work upon this problem, which proved in the end to be very elusive. But it gave him at least a starting-point, and he forthwith commenced his quest of the telephone. As he was then in England, his first step was naturally to visit Sir Charles Wheatstone, the best known English expert on telegraphy. Sir Charles had earned his title by many inventions. He was a simple-natured scientist, and treated Bell with the utmost kindness. He showed him an ingenious talking-machine that had been made by Baron de Kempelin. At this time Bell was twenty-two and unknown; Wheatstone was sixty-seven and famous. And the personality of the veteran scientist made so vivid a picture upon the mind of the impressionable young Bell that the grand passion of science became henceforth the master-motif of his life. From this summit of glorious ambition he was thrown, several months later, into the depths of grief and despondency. The White Plague had come to the home in Edinburgh and taken away his two brothers. More, it had put its mark upon the young inventor himself. Nothing but a change of climate, said his doctor, would put him out of danger. And so, to save his life, he and his father and mother set sail from Glasgow and came to the small Canadian town of Brantford, where for a year he fought down his tendency to consumption, and satisfied his nervous energy by teaching "Visible Speech" to a tribe of Mohawk Indians. By this time it had become evident, both to his parents and to his friends, that young Graham was destined to become some sort of a creative genius. He was tall and supple, with a pale complexion, large