those corrected for publication, he ascended to his sleeping-apartment
and rang his bell. A servant appeared.

"'Edgar,' said Cavendish, addressing him by name, 'listen! Have I ever
commanded you to do an unreasonable thing?'

"The man heard the question without astonishment, for he knew his
master's eccentricities, and replied in the negative.

"'And that being the case,' continued the old man, 'I believe I have a
right to be obeyed.'

"The domestic bowed his assent.

"'I shall now give you my last command,' Cavendish went on to say, 'I am
going to die. I shall, upon your departure, lock my room. Here let me be
alone for eight hours. Tell no one. Let no person come near. When the
time has passed, come and see if I am dead. If so, let Lord George
Cavendish know. This is my last command. Now, go.'

"The servant knew from long experience that to dispute his master's will
would be useless. He bowed, therefore, and turned to go away.

"'Stay--one word!' added Cavendish. 'Repeat exactly the order I have
given.'

"Edgar repeated the order, promised obedience once more, and retired
from the chamber."

The servant did not keep his promise, but called to his master's bedside
Sir Everard Home, a distinguished physician.

"Sir Everard inquired if he felt ill.

"'I am not ill,' replied Cavendish; 'but I am about to die. Don't you
think a man of eighty has lived long enough? Why am I disturbed? I had
matters to arrange. Give me a glass of water.'

"The glass of water was handed to him; he drank it, turned on his back,
closed his eyes, and died.

"This end of a great man, improbable as are some of the incidents
narrated, is no fiction of imagination. Sir Everard Home's statement,
read before the Royal Institution, corroborates every particular. The
mental constitution of the philosopher, puzzling enough during his
life, was shrouded certainly in even greater mystery in his death."

It is as a chemist that Cavendish stands preeminent. Without
instructors, without companionship, in the solitary rooms of his
dwelling, he meditated and experimented. The result of his researches he
communicated in papers read to the Royal Society, and these are quite
numerous. He was the first to demonstrate the nature of atmospheric air
and also of water. He was the discoverer of nitrogen and several gaseous
bodies. He did much to overthrow the phlogiston theory, which was
universally accepted in his time; and his researches upon arsenic