Day of a Scientist 153 



Last night's conversation was typical of the kind of moral 

 and intellectual support he tried to give her every so often, 

 but she had not found it very helpful when he had suggested 

 that she point out to the rest of the board that the original 

 Mary had been Jewish too. Jane had given a wry smile, but 

 she had known right off that this was just the kind of argu- 

 ment that seldom swayed a public meeting, despite its logic. 

 And anyhow it had no bearing on the petition the board 

 was expecting to receive in a day or two from an orthodox 

 group who wanted to aboUsh Christmas, or at least the 

 Christmas play, entirely. 



All things considered. Bill decided he would let Jane 

 sleep and get his own breakfast. He pushed the button at 

 the side of his bed which his twelve-year-old son, who was 

 showing signs of becoming an engineer, had rigged up to 

 start the coffee percolator downstairs and hurried into the 

 bathroom to shave. He was probably the last person in town 

 to use a straight razor, but he kept it up because he was 

 proud of his skill in wielding the old-fashioned blade, just 

 as he was proud of his ability to make the old air-driven 

 ultracentrifuge in his lab give as good pictures as the new 

 Spinco that the graduate students insisted on using. 



Incidentally, he thought, as he began to strop the blade, 

 he must remember to do something about improving the 

 scheduling of the Spinco. Everyone in the lab seemed to 

 be working on some problem or other that required this 

 particular instrument. At first he had given responsibihty 

 to Assistant Professor May for seeing that it was kept in 

 order and made available to all on an equitable basis. May 

 knew the instrument inside and out; in fact, it was alleged 

 that he had built quite a good centrifuge as a science project 

 when he was in prep school in the East, where he had gone 

 on the local alumni scholarship. Nevertheless, he had been 

 a flop at scheduling the centrifuge. For one thing, he was 



