The class-room was a spacious rectangular hall with large grated windows that admitted an abundance of light and air. Along the two sides extended three wide tiers of stone covered with wood, filled with students arranged in alphabetical order. At the end opposite the entrance, under a print of St. Thomas Aquinas, rose the professor’s chair on a level platform with a little stairway on each side. With the exception of a beautiful blackboard in a narra [wood] frame, scarcely ever used, since there was still written on it the viva that had appeared on the opening day, no furniture, either useful or useless, was to be seen. The walls, painted white and covered with glazed tiles, to prevent scratches, were entirely bare, having neither a drawing nor a picture, nor even an outline of any physical apparatus. The students had no need of any; no one missed the practical instruction in an extremely experimental science; for years and years it has been so taught, and the country has not been upset but continues just as ever. Now and then some little instrument descended from heaven and was exhibited to the class from a distance, like the monstrance to the prostrate worshipers—look, but touch not! From time to time when some complacent professor appeared, one day in the year was set aside for visiting the mysterious laboratory and gazing from without at the puzzling apparatus arranged in glass cases. No one could complain, for on that day there were to be seen quantities of brass and glassware, tubes, disks, wheels, bells, and the like—the exhibition did not get beyond that, and the country was not upset.... This was the professor who that morning called the roll and directed many of the students to recite the lesson from memory, word for word. The phonographs got into operation, some well, some ill, some stammering, and received their grades. He who recited without an error earned a good mark, and he who made more than three mistakes a bad mark. A fat boy with a sleepy face and hair as stiff and hard as the bristles of a brush yawned until he seemed about to dislocate his jaws, and stretched himself with his arms extended as if he were in his bed. The professor saw this and wished to startle him. “Eh, there, sleepy-head! What’s this? Lazy, too; so it’s sure you don’t know the lesson, ha?” This question, instead of offending the class, amused them and many laughed; it was a daily occurrence. But the sleeper did not laugh; he arose and, with a bound, rubbed his eyes, and, as if a steam-engine were turning the phonograph, began to recite: