When the electric chair for dental operations was invented, he sacrificed a tooth to satisfy his curiosity as to its operation.

He could not play brass instruments to any musical purpose; but his collection of double slide trombones, bombardons with patent compensating pistons, comma trumpets, and the like, would have equipped a small military band; whilst his newly tempered harmonium with fifty-three notes to each octave, and his pianos with simplified keyboards that nobody could play on, were the despair of all musical amateurs who came to stay at Towers Cottage, as his place was called.

He would buy the most expensive and elaborate lathe, and spend a month trying to make a true billiard ball at it.

At the end of that time he would have to send for a professional hand, who would cornet the ball with apparently miraculous skill in a few seconds.

He got on better with chemistry and photography; but at last he settled down to electrical engineering, and, giving up the idea of doing everything with his own half-trained hand, kept a skilled man always in his laboratory to help him out.
All along there had been a certain love of the marvelous at the bottom of his fancy for inventions.