Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867; Physicists -- Great Britain -- Biography
'You may imagine my delight when I came to know Mrs. Marcet personally;
how often I cast my thoughts backward, delighting to connect the
past and the present; how often, when sending a paper to her as a
thank-offering, I thought of my first instructress, and such like
thoughts will remain with me.
'I have some such thoughts even as regards your own father; who was,
I may say, the first who personally at Geneva, and afterwards by
correspondence, encouraged, and by that sustained me.'
Twelve or thirteen years ago Mr. Faraday and myself quitted the
Institution one evening together, to pay a visit to our friend Grove in
Baker Street. He took my arm at the door, and, pressing it to his
side in his warm genial way, said, 'Come, Tyndall, I will now show you
something that will interest you.' We walked northwards, passed the
house of Mr. Babbage, which drew forth a reference to the famous evening
parties once assembled there. We reached Blandford Street, and after a
little looking about he paused before a stationer's shop, and then went
in. On entering the shop, his usual animation seemed doubled; he looked
rapidly at everything it contained. To the left on entering was a door,
through which he looked down into a little room, with a window in front
facing Blandford Street. Drawing me towards him, he said eagerly, 'Look
there, Tyndall, that was my working-place. I bound books in that
little nook.' A respectable-looking woman stood behind the counter: his
conversation with me was too low to be heard by her, and he now turned
to the counter to buy some cards as an excuse for our being there. He
asked the woman her name--her predecessor's name--his predecessor's
name. 'That won't do,' he said, with good-humoured impatience; 'who was
his predecessor?' 'Mr. Riebau,' she replied, and immediately added,
as if suddenly recollecting herself, 'He, sir, was the master of Sir
Charles Faraday.' 'Nonsense!' he responded, 'there is no such person.'
Great was her delight when I told her the name of her visitor; but
she assured me that as soon as she saw him running about the shop, she
felt-though she did not know why--that it must be 'Sir Charles Faraday.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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