Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/416

 repute in the market-place, but rather to keep free of those follies, lest they confuse him and make him soft.

Holabird was as much bewildered as Tubbs would have been by the ramifications of Martin's work. What did he think he was anyway—a bacteriologist or a bio-physicist? But Holabird was won by the scientific world's reception of Martin's first important paper, on the effect of X-rays, gamma rays, and beta rays on the anti-Shiga phage. It was praised in Paris and Brussels and Cambridge as much as in New York, for its insight and for "the clarity and to perhaps be unscientifically enthusiastic, the sheer delight and style of its presentation," as Professor Berkeley Wurtz put it; which may be indicated by quoting the first paragraph of the paper:

When Director Holabird saw the paper—Yeo was vicious enough to take it in and ask his opinion—he said, "Splendid, oh, I say, simply splendid! I've just had the chance to skim through it, old boy, but I shall certainly read it carefully, the first free moment I have."