HER.

Everyone who knows anything about art, archaeology, or science has heard
of the famous FitzTaylor Museum at Oxbridge. And even outsiders who care
for none of these things have heard of the quarrels and internal
dissensions that have disturbed that usual calm which ought to reign
within the walls of a museum. The illustrious founder, to whose
munificence we owe this justly famous institution, provided in his will
for the support of four curators, who govern the two separate departments
of science and art. The University has been in the habit of making
grants of money from time to time to these separate departments for the
acquisition of scientific or archaeological curiosities and MSS. I
suppose there was something wrong in the system, but whatever it may be,
it led to notorious jealousies and disputes. At the time of which I
write, the principal curators of the art section were Professor
Girdelstone and Mr. Monteagle, of Prince's College. I looked after the
scientific welfare of the museum with Lowestoft as my understudy--he was
practically a nonentity and an authority on lepidoptera. Now, whenever a
grant was made to the left wing of the building, as I call it, I always
used to say that science was being sacrificed to archaeology. I mocked
at the illuminated MSS. over which Girdelstone grew enthusiastic, and the
musty theological folios purchased by Monteagle. They heaped abuse upon
me, of course, when my turn came, and cracked many a quip on my splendid
skeleton of the ichthyosaurus, the only known specimen from Greenland. At
one time the strife broke into print, and the London press animadverted
on our conduct. It became a positive scandal. We were advised, I
remember, to wash our dirty linen at home, and though I have often
wondered why the press should act as a voluntary laundress on such
occasions, I suppose the remark is a just one.

There came a day when we took the advice of the press, and from then
until now science and art have gone hand in hand at the University of
Oxbridge. How the breach was healed forms the subject of the present
leaf from my memoirs.

America, it has been wisely said, is the great land of fraud. It is the
Egypt of the modern world. From America came the spiritualists, from
America bogus goods, and cheap ideas and pirated editions, and from
America I have every reason to believe came Dr. Groschen. But if his
ancestors came from Rhine or Jordan, that he received h