whistle. My remark was an entirely casual one, based on no knowl- 

 edge of the matter whatever, but it upset the Professor as much as if 

 Einstein had said it. He immediately pulled out a pencil and paper 

 and started to prove to me how I must be wrong. I then became 

 enough interested to believe that he could not be right, and we dis- 

 cussed this matter all of one afternoon without leaving the lunch 

 table. I kept trying to get out of this by saying that it made no 

 difference what the molecules did, but the Professor kept saying, 

 "But this is a very serious matter with me. You know I taught 

 physics once." At about the time we should have left for dinner, I 

 became exhausted and told the Professor that since he was an older 

 man I could not say what I wanted to him and I thought that he had 

 an unfair advantage. Whereupon he said to go ahead and say what 

 I pleased, which we both proceeded to do for another hour or so, but 

 when I reached the Johns Hopkins Club after everyone had finished 

 dinner, I found a group of my associates in the middle of an even 

 more violent discussion about these molecules, which continued until 

 well after midnight. When I arrived at the laboratory in the morn- 

 ing, a bit late after the efforts of the preceding day. Dr. Abel came 

 into my room with triumph written all over his face and handed 

 me a book, saying, "Read that and see if I'm not right." On looking 

 it over, I found it to be a book on how to square the circle. 



The laboratory lunch table became famous among the pharma- 

 cologists and visitors from many lands. Adjoining Professor Abel's 

 laboratory was a fairly large room in which Dr. Rouiller had a chem- 

 ical bench and in which Dr. Marshall was carrying out his experi- 

 ments on the kidney. The lunch table itself was a small kitchen 

 table covered with a Avhite oilcloth, and, except for the Professor, who 

 had a chair at the head of the table, we sat on laboratory stools. 

 Charlie Kamphaus supplied us with a long roll of bread, some cheese, 

 and "hot dogs" which I would not eat. This irritated the Professor 

 greatly. He tried for years by every means he could think of to get 

 me to eat them and usually ended his arguments by saying, "Oh, 

 well, you are prejudiced, as all Ne^v Englanders are prejudiced." 

 We made our own coffee. As far as I know, every member of the 

 staff suggested at one time or another having something else for lunch, 

 and the Professor always allowed him to try it, but every time we 

 came back to the bread, cheese, and coffee luncheons, and all agreed 

 that these were the best. We would have almost finished luncheon 

 when Professor Abel would appear from his room, having removed 

 his rubber apron but not his white hat. It was never more than a 

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