, I
remember, only two chairs in the sitting-room; so that when a guest came
(and I think I was the only one) Cullingworth used to squat upon a pile
of yearly volumes of the British Medical Journal in the corner. I can
see him now levering himself up from his lowly seat, and striding about
the room roaring and striking with his hands, while his little wife
sat mum in the corner, listening to him with love and admiration in her
eyes. What did we care, any one of the three of us, where we sat or how
we lived, when youth throbbed hot in our veins, and our souls were all
aflame with the possibilities of life? I still look upon those Bohemian
evenings, in the bare room amid the smell of the cheese, as being among
the happiest that I have known.

I was a frequent visitor to the Cullingworths, for the pleasure that I
got was made the sweeter by the pleasure which I hoped that I gave. They
knew no one, and desired to know no one; so that socially I seemed to be
the only link that bound them to the world. I even ventured to interfere
in the details of their little menage. Cullingworth had a fad at the
time, that all the diseases of civilisation were due to the abandonment
of the open-air life of our ancestors, and as a corollary he kept his
windows open day and night. As his wife was obviously fragile, and yet
would have died before she would have uttered a word of complaint, I
took it upon myself to point out to him that the cough from which she
suffered was hardly to be cured so long as she spent her life in a
draught. He scowled savagely at me for my interference; and I thought
we were on the verge of a quarrel, but it blew over, and he became more
considerate in the matter of ventilation.

Our evening occupations just about that time were of a most
extraordinary character. You are aware that there is a substance, called
waxy matter, which is deposited in the tissues of the body during the
course of certain diseases. What this may be and how it is formed has
been a cause for much bickering among pathologists. Cullingworth had
strong views upon the subject, holding that the waxy matter was really
the same thing as the glycogen which is normally secreted by the liver.
But it is one thing to have an idea, and another to be able to prove
it. Above all, we wanted some waxy matter with which to experiment. But
fortune favoured us in the most magical way. The Professor of Pathology
had come into possession of a magnificent specimen