In a group of motionless and eager attention were A--, the sage metereologist, beloved in two continents; B--, abstruse and difficult, meditative, as a man might be who kept his hand on the pulses of matter, and B--, skillful in weighing the atoms of the air, or probing the volcanoes of the moon. In one line, mingling in conversation that reached Leacraft’s ears as a strange jargon of conflicting sciences, were G--, H-- and H--k. And beyond them, mute, as if by mutual repulsion, sat F--, the agile scrutinizer of Nature’s crystals; P--, holding in his labyrinthine memory the names of half a universe of shells, and B--n, to whom each plant of the wayside bowed in recognition of a master’s knowledge of itself. Against the wall, in a triad of sympathy, was A--, the surgeon; S--, the neurologist, and R--. And alone, in an isolation that belied his intense geniality, was K--. And through all the scientific congeries, which were far more extended than Leacraft could recognize, or even Dr. M-- recall, was a more garrulous grouping of politicians, statesmen, diplomats, ministers, the well dressed circles of the rich, and the dillettantes, drawn to this unusual assemblage by the presence of the President. The quiet and dull room, faded, and with contents tiresomely drilled into the exact alignments of a museum hall, took on an almost brilliant appearance. The fancy amused itself with the thought that it too felt, in its stagnated life, the unique occasion, and shook itself into a momentary wakefulness, to note and record its distinguished guests, that its streaked walls tried to hide their unseemly rents, and the multiplied models and charts struggled to look recent and familiar and appreciative, amid such intellectual tumult. But now the audience was forgotten at that theatrical moment when the chairman and the lecturer advanced over the platform to assume the directive guidance of the evening. They did advance with that curious _gaucherie_ which somehow always disables the scientific man in his official and public utterances, and seems, by some trick of compensation, the more unredeemable as the unfortunate victim of its cynical attachment is the more distinguished and renowned.