26o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



That book by " T and T'," as is well known, consists of chapters which 

 are more original than the papers usually read before scientific societies. 

 Only one volume has ever appeared — the second, alas ! alas ! never will 

 now. 



To test the power of the Clarendon Press to publish such a book, 

 Tait and he wrote down at random complicated equations, lines of 

 wholly unintelligible reasoning, and then thought it would be a good 

 joke to send out the proofs — as copies of an original paper — to various 

 of their friends. And one day Thomson told me with a twinkle in his 

 eye, " Nobody has yet found any mistakes in that paper." 



Every morning, except Mondays and Saturdays, Thomson lectured 

 twice; the first lecture, 9 to 10, was on experimental physics; the second, 

 11 to 12, on mathematical physics. 



Electricity was the subject of the 9 to 10 lecture during a particular 

 session which I have in my mind. But the experiments generally went 

 wrong, and Thomson used modestly to say, " Faraday's result was so 

 and so; mine is just the opposite. But Faraday, with inferior appa- 

 ratus, divined the truth. Remember his result, not what you have just 

 seen me obtain." 



Thomson with all his genius, all his power of advising how an ex- 

 periment should be made, with all his creative originality in suggesting 

 the details of scientific apparatus and methods, could not make the 

 experiments with his own hands. We all dreaded his touching the 

 apparatus which we had set up and adjusted. He was too impulsive, 

 too full of exuberant energy. After the apparatus was broken when 

 he had touched it he was profoundly sorry. At that time it gave us 

 the feeling that we were able to help him by trying experiments on his 

 behalf. But this feeling resembled that of the calculator who helped 

 Newton when he became too excited to finish the application of his 

 principles to the explanation of Kepler's laws, or the feelings of the 

 sculptor's assistant who transfers to marble his master's inspired crea- 

 tion in clay. We loved him the more that he allowed us to take a part — 

 we felt that we were the soldiers of a great warrior. 



In his mathematical physics lectures — aye, even in his elementary 

 lectures — the suggestions that he poured forth were much above the 

 heads of the ordinary undergraduates — over 100 in this class — and 

 they gained little by coming to them except a register of their attend- 

 ance, necessary for their degrees. For, as soon as he turned round to 

 write on the blackboard, the students row by row began to creep out 

 of the lecture room through a back door behind the benches and steal 

 down-stairs, their bodily presence following their mental presence, 

 which had left as soon as the reading of the roll-call was finished. 

 From time to time Thomson put up his eye-glass, peered at the growing 

 empty space, and remarked on the curious gradual diminution of 

 density in the upper part of the lecture room. 



