ABSTRACT
The author's father, who had a color warehouse, frequently occupied himself in making some of the colors in which he dealt, and for that purpose had fitted up for himself a small laboratory to which he had access, and where he sometimes enjoyed the privilege of helping him. The faculty of thinking in phenomena can only be cultivated if the mind is constantly trained, and this was effected in the author's case by his endeavoring to perform, so far as his means would allow him, all the experiments whose description he read in the books. Since the ordinary career of a gymnasium student was not open to the author, his father took him to an apothecary at Heppenheim in the Hessian Bergstrasse; but at the end of ten months he was so tired of the author that he sent him home again to his father.
