Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/436

420 by not having taken into consideration the existence of leap years, in which case the magic number 121 occurs in no less than four cases; so that nothing at all is decided by it.

I can only add my hope that, if any of my readers should become acquainted with the whereabouts of the learned Ponderdunder, he would kindly communicate by electric telegraph this painful intelligence to that energetic traveller.

I have subsequently been informed that Professor Ponderdunder's honorarium is only £800 a-year, and the payment of all travelling expenses. The former is doubled upon dangerous travel. I was told that he also enjoys a snug sinecure of considerable value recently instituted in his own country; being at the head of the department for the promotion of "Small Science and Low Art." The family of the Ponderdunders possess the peculiar gift of manipulating learned bodies. The Flowery—Rhetorical, and the Zoo-Ethnological Societies barely escaped perdition under their costly autocracy. I regret also to add, (but truth forbids me to conceal the interesting fact) that Ponderdunder is not a member of all existing academies as his visiting card indicated.

On searching the list of the members of the Roman Academy "Dei Lynxcii," I find that he is not a Lynx. This, the oldest of European academies, originally existed in the time of Galileo. About a quarter of a century ago I had the honour of receiving its diploma.