Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/76

64 before he has begun to use his own eyes! Use your own eyes first, then get a little extra help in the shape of a shilling pocket-lens, and by and by you will be able to use a real microscope, and enjoy using it too."

This was rather a long lecture for Willie to give, or for Jack to listen to. He wouldn't have listened if it had not been for what he had just seen. He said nothing, but he made up his mind he would get one of these useful shilling magnifiers. Willie usually had a country walk during the school half-holiday, and Jack had often been invited to accompany him; but he didn't care to go "humbugging after grubs and weeds," he said. Now, however, he invited himself, and somewhat surprised his friend by stating he wanted to go with him.

 

T would hardly be reasonable to complain of Prof. Huxley's delay in replying to the paper on "Agnosticism" which I read five months ago, when, at the urgent request of an old friend, I reluctantly consented to address the Church Congress at Manchester. I am obliged to him for doing it the honor to bring it to the notice of a wider circle than that to which it was directly addressed; and I fear that, for reasons which have been the occasion of universal regret, he may not have been equal to literary effort. But, at the same time, it is impossible not to notice that a writer is at a great advantage in attacking a fugitive essay a quarter of a year after it was made public. Such a lapse of time ought, indeed, to enable him to apprehend distinctly the argument with which he is dealing; and it might, at least, secure him from any such inaccuracy in quotation as greater haste might excuse. But if either his idiosyncrasy, or his sense of assured superiority, should 