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.