a certain wild rationality seemed to light up the affair. I knew
it was unusual, in my own country, for the Astronomer Royal to walk down
the Strand with his coat plastered all over with the Solar System.
Indeed, it was unusual for any English astronomical lecturer to
advertise the subject of his lectures in this fashion. But though it
would be unusual, it would not necessarily be unreasonable. In fact, I
think it might add to the colour and variety of life, if specialists did
adopt this sort of scientific heraldry. I should like to be able to
recognise an entomologist at sight by the decorative spiders and
cockroaches crawling all over his coat and waistcoat. I should like to
see a conchologist in a simple costume of shells. An osteopath, I
suppose, would be agreeably painted so as to resemble a skeleton, while
a botanist would enliven the street with the appearance of a
Jack-in-the-Green. So while I regarded the astronomical lecturer in the
astronomical coat as a figure distinguishable, by a high degree of
differentiation, from the artless astronomers of my island home (enough
their simple loveliness for me) I saw in him nothing illogical, but
rather an imaginative extreme of logic. And then came another turn of
the wheel of topsy-turvydom, and all the logic was scattered to the
wind.

Expanding his starry bosom and standing astraddle, with the air of one
who owned the street, the strange being continued, 'Yes, I am lecturing
on astronomy, anthropology, archaeology, palaeontology, embryology,
eschatology,' and so on in a thunderous roll of theoretical sciences
apparently beyond the scope of any single university, let alone any
single professor. Having thus introduced himself, however, he got to
business. He apologised with true American courtesy for having
questioned me at all, and excused it on the ground of his own exacting
responsibilities. I imagined him to mean the responsibility of
simultaneously occupying the chairs of all the faculties already
mentioned. But these apparently were trifles to him, and something far
more serious was clouding his brow.

'I feel it to be my duty,' he said, 'to acquaint myself with any
stranger visiting this city; and it is an additional pleasure to welcome
here a member of the Upper Ten.' I assured him earnestly that I knew
nothing about the Upper Ten, except that I did not belong to them; I
felt, not without alarm, that the Upper Ten might be another secret
society. He waved my