| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 1 | 90 | 179 | 269 | 358 |
|
gentleman in boots of slashed cloth) by his splendid researches upon the
More Toxic Alkaloids, and Professor Redwood rose to eminence--I do not
clearly remember how he rose to eminence! I know he was very eminent,
and that's all. Things of this sort grow. I fancy it was a voluminous
work on Reaction Times with numerous plates of sphygmograph tracings (I
write subject to correction) and an admirable new terminology, that did
the thing for him.
The general public saw little or nothing of either of these gentlemen.
Sometimes at places like the Royal Institution and the Society of Arts
it did in a sort of way see Mr. Bensington, or at least his blushing
baldness and something of his collar and coat, and hear fragments of a
lecture or paper that he imagined himself to be reading audibly; and
once I remember--one midday in the vanished past--when the British
Association was at Dover, coming on Section C or D, or some such letter,
which had taken up its quarters in a public-house, and following two,
serious-looking ladies with paper parcels, out of mere curiosity,
through a door labelled "Billiards" and "Pool" into a scandalous
darkness, broken only by a magic-lantern circle of Redwood's tracings.
I watched the lantern slides come and go, and listened to a voice (I
forget what it was saying) which I believe was the voice of Professor
Redwood, and there was a sizzling from the lantern and another sound
that kept me there, still out of curiosity, until the lights were
unexpectedly turned up. And then I perceived that this sound was the
sound of the munching of buns and sandwiches and things that the
7
Page
Quick Jump
|