"I am very glad to see you," he said kindly, and gazing with a little sigh at me. "I remember you well. But how much you are grown! I fear we used to frighten you, in the days gone by. We took the wrong course altogether. If we had only been gentle, and patient, we might have done much with your singular case, and learned things of very deep interest. It was bad luck. There were too many of us, and the spirit of rivalry spoiled everything. I should have kept you to myself, as I had every right to do. But poor Jargoon, and unhappy Chocolous--you have heard what a sad loss all Science has sustained? Have you not? They have both fallen victims to the spirit of research. I ought not to grieve for them; for there can be no nobler termination to a scientific life. Jargoon, as you know, had a doltish theory--though I should not call it that, when he cannot contradict me--about the universal action on all organisms, of what he called gaseous expansion. He made a great discovery, as he believed, of a primary element, 'Proto-hylic Nephelin,'--intensely inflammable in combination. He was trying its effects upon the human system, by inhalation through a straw; when unhappily Mrs. Jargoon struck a match, to seal an important letter. In a moment, the Professor, and his theories were abolished; so exhaustively, that they could hold the inquest, upon nothing but the calcination of his left glass-eye." "I never heard anything more shocking," I exclaimed, forgetting all the evil, in the sadness of his end, and admiring the courage of the great discoverer. "And poor Professor Chocolous--was he abolished too?"