I had some bad moments after he was gone. “Will-of-the-wisp,” I said, “a fascinating will-of-the-wisp. I’ll never see that money. He’ll simply never think of it again. I’ll have to give up that vacation. Serves me right.” I did see the money promptly, for Mr. McClure did not forget as I expected him to do, but wired his London office that night to send me a check. What the new magazine would want from me, I gathered in my long and exciting interview with Mr. McClure, was articles on the achievements of the great French and English scientists. Not history, not literature, not politics, but science, discoveries, inventions, and adventures. Here I was back to my college days. I found my natural enthusiasm for the physical world and its meanings which Professor Tingley had directed was not dead, only sleeping. I found that, little as I knew of all these things, I still had something of a vocabulary and knew enough to find my way about by hard work. There was Pasteur; there was Janssen, who was building an observatory on Mont Blanc; there was Bertillon, the inventor of the system of criminal identification then attracting the attention of the world. It took all my courage to talk with these gentlemen, but I was soon to find they were the simplest and friendliest of people. For two years I kept on hand popular scientific articles whose success depended on interviews with distinguished specialists, and in that time I met with only one rebuff; but that was a very contemptuous one. It was not from a man but from a gifted American woman who was doing valuable special work in one of the great French scientific institutions. The effect of scholarship on a woman, I told myself. She doesn’t ripen, she hardens. I know better now. It happens, but by no means to all women. Take Dr. Florence Sabin, a great human being as well as a great specialist. The contacts I made on this work left me precious memories. There was my acquaintance with Madame and Monsieur Pasteur. One of the first articles Mr. McClure asked for was on the Institute, then but eight years old. Of course that meant an interview with Pasteur if it could be managed. It turned out to be easy enough. The Pasteurs lived in a spacious apartment in the Institute: big rooms with heavy furniture, heavy curtains, dark soft rugs of the period. It was not until I was actually in the library where Madame Pasteur led me that I realized how sadly Pasteur was crippled by the paralysis of his left side which he had suffered twenty-five years earlier after three years of incessant and exhausting labor on the diseases of the silkworm. He moved with difficulty, he hesitated painfully over words; but his eyes were bright, curious, interested.