Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/189

Rh the patrons of the Stuyvesant School of Science. It is probably the most fashionably patroned institution in New York; and Welter's name, I know, figures with it in the newspapers."

"Nothing could be better!" Trant exclaimed. "Kuno Schmalz has his psychological laboratory there. I see my way now, Rentland; and you will hear from me early in the afternoon. But keep away from the docks!" He turned and left the astonished customs officers abruptly. Half an hour later the young psychologist sent in his card to Professor Schmalz in the laboratory of the Stuyvesant School of Science. The German, broad-faced, spectacled, beaming, himself came to the laboratory door.

"Is it Mr. Trant—the young, apt pupil of my old friend, Dr. Reiland?" he boomed, admiringly. "Ach! luck is good to Reiland! For twenty years I, too, have shown them in the laboratory how fear, guilt, every emotion causes in the body reactions which can be measured. But do they apply it? Pouf! No! it remains to them all impractical, academic, because I have only nincompoops in my classes!"

"Professor Schmalz," said Trant, following him into the laboratory, and glancing from one to another of the delicate instruments with keen interest, "tell me along what line you are now working."

"Ach! I have been for a year now experimenting with the plethysmograph and the pneumograph. I make a taste, I make a smell, or I make a noise to excite feeling in the subject; and I read by the plethysmograph that the volume of blood in the hand decreases under the emotions and that the pulse quickens; and