s method, but
the estimation it held at Cambridge. "Yes!" said the tutor, "there is the
answer certainly; but it _stands to reason_ that a cubic equation cannot be
solved in this space." He then sat down, went through a process about ten
times as long, and then said with triumph: "There! that is the way to solve
a cubic equation!"

I think the tutor in this case was never matched, except by the country
organist. A master of the instrument went into the organ-loft during
service, and asked the organist to let him _play the congregation out_;
consent was given. The stranger, when the time came, began a voluntary
which made the people open their ears, and wonder who had got into the
loft: they kept their places to enjoy the treat. When the organist saw
this, he pushed the interloper off the stool, with "You'll never play 'em
out this side Christmas." He then began his own drone, and the congregation
began to move quietly away. "There," said he, "that's the way to play 'em
out!"

I have not scrupled to bear hard on my own university, on the Royal
Society, and on other respectable existences: being very much the friend of
all. I will now clear the Royal Society from a very small and obscure
slander, simply because I know how. This dissertation began with {190} the
work of Mr. Oliver Byrne, the dual arithmetician, etc. This writer
published, in 1849, a method of calculating logarithms.[329] First, a long
list of instances in which, as he alleges, foreign discoverers have been
pillaged by Englishmen, or turned into Englishmen: for example,
O'Neill,[330] so called by Mr. Byrne, the rectifier of the semi-cubical
parabola claimed by the Saxons under the name of _Neal_: the grandfather of
this mathematician was conspicuous enough as _Neal_; he was archbishop of
York. This list, says the writer, might be continued without end; but he
has mercy, and finishes with his own case, as follows:--"About twenty years
ago, I discovered this method of directly calculating logarithms. I could
generally find the logarithm of any number in a minute or two without the
use of books or tables. The importance of the discovery subjected me to all
sorts of prying. Some asserted that I committed a table of logarithms to
memory; others attributed it to a peculiar mental property; and when
Societies and individuals failed to extract my secret, they never failed to
traduce the inventor and the invention. Among the learned Societies, the
Royal Society of