A Memorable Lesson 



Thursday afternoon came at last. As soon 

 as the chemistry-lesson is over, we were to go 

 for a walk to Les Angles, the pretty village 

 over yonder, perched on a steep rock. We 

 were therefore in our Sunday best, our out- 

 of-doors clothes : black frock-coats and tall 

 hats. The whole school was there, some 

 thirty of us, in the charge of an usher, who 

 knew as little as we did of the things which 

 we were about to see. We crossed the thres- 

 hold of the laboratory, not without excite- 

 ment. I entered a great nave with a Gothic 

 roof, an old, bare church through which one's 

 voice echoed, into which the light penetrated 

 discreetly through stained-glass windows set in 

 ribs and rosettes of stone. At the back were 

 huge raised benches, with room for an audi- 

 ence of many hundreds; at the other end, 

 where the choir once was, stood an enormous 

 chimney-mantel; in the middle was a large, 

 massive table, corroded by the chemicals. At 

 one end of this table was a tarred tub, lined 

 inside with lead and filled with water. This, 

 I at once learnt, was the pneumatic trough, the 

 vessel in which the gases were collected. 



The professor begins the experiment. He 

 takes a sort of large, long glass bulb, bent 

 abruptly in the region of the neck. This, he 

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