EDITOR'S TABLE. 



553 



twenty shillings a week. " I have often 

 wondered since," he observed in an ad- 

 dress * delivered in the year 1884, " at 

 the amount of genuine happiness which 

 a young fellow of regular habits, not 

 caring for either pipe or mug, may ex- 

 tract even from pay like that." He 

 next found employment in railroad sur- 

 veying, the railway-building mania in 

 England being then at its height. The 

 remuneration was a little better than 

 in his former position, but the work 

 was terrible. "The day's work in the 

 field," he tells us, " usually began and 

 ended with the day's light, while fre- 

 quently in the office, and more espe 

 cially as the awful 30th of November 

 the latest date at which plans and sec- 

 tions of projected lines could be de- 

 posited at the Board of Trade drew 

 near, there was little difference between 

 day and night, every hour of the twenty- 

 four being absorbed in the work of 

 preparation. Strong men were broken 

 down by the strain and labor of that 

 arduous time. ... In my own modest 

 sphere I well remember the refresh- 

 ment I occasionally derived from five 

 minutes' sleep on a deal table with 

 Babbage and Cal let's Logarithms under 

 my head for a pillow." A better school 

 for expelling any sickly dreams or pes- 

 simisons that might haunt a young man's 

 brain could not easily be imagined. 

 Possibly more than one rather discour- 

 aging philosophical treatise might never 

 have been written had the authors been 

 required to go through a similar expe- 

 rience. At one moment the idea of 

 speculating in railway shares took pos- 

 session of the young surveyor's mind. 

 He made a purchase in the most legiti- 

 mate way, and for three weeks was the 

 most miserable of men; when, finding 

 the burden intolerable, he went back to 

 his brokers and "unloaded" at the ex- 

 act price he had paid. 



* My Schools and Schoolmasters. Eeprinted 

 in The Popular Science Monthly for January, 

 1885. 



After four years of railway work 

 Tyndall accepted a position as teacher 

 of mathematics at Queenwood College 

 in Dampshire. Here he learned by prac- 

 tical experience that two factors went 

 to the formation of a teacher, ability to 

 inform and ability to stimulate. To 

 quote his own words in the address al- 

 ready referred to: "A power of char- 

 acter must underlie and enforce the 

 work of the intellect. There are men 

 who can so rouse and energize their 

 pupils as to make the hardest work 

 agreeable. Without this power it is 

 questionable whether the teacher can 

 ever really enjoy his vocation with it 

 I do not know a higher, nobler, more 

 blessed calling than that of the man 

 who, scorning the cramming so preva- 

 lent in our day, converts the knowledge 

 he imparts into a lever to lift, exercise, 

 and strengthen the growing minds com- 

 mitted to his care." After a year of 

 teaching the ardent student gathered 

 all he had saved up to that time, some 

 two hundred pounds, and went over to 

 Germany in order to take a course in 

 science at the University of Marburg, 

 which at the time was enjoying great 

 repute through the lectures of the illus- 

 trious chemist Bunsen. It was neither 

 a desire for money nor a desire for 

 fame, he tells us, that took him to Ger- 

 many. He had been reading Fichte and 

 Emerson and Carlyle, and had been 

 touched by their spirit, "The Alpha 

 and Omega of their teaching was loyalty 

 to duty. Higher knowledge and greater 

 strength were within reach of the man 

 who unflinchingly enacted his best in- 

 sight." Living was cheap at Marburg 

 in those days : a good dinner could be 

 got for eightpence a more bounteous 

 dinner, indeed, than so abstemious a 

 liver as Tyndall cared to eat; for it con- 

 sisted of several courses, while he gen- 

 erally limited himself to one, not caring 

 to waste any of his energy in needless 

 wear and tear of his digestive organs. 

 After studying for a time at Marburg he 

 went to Berlin, where he fell in with a 



