The Microscope. 371 



EDITOR'S,^ 



DEPARTMENT 



^^1^ 



" You say that you can neither read nor write ?" the Chan- 

 cellor asked the witness. " I said so." " How do you get a 

 living?" " I scrub, wash, tend killin's, spin wool, and do such 

 things," It was pitiful, yet it was inspiring. The poor woman 

 had met the angel at the cross-road and had touched his hand. 

 That was the comfort in it. 



The angel is alwaj^s at the cross-roads. He may take the 

 form ol a knight in shining armor, or only that of a sign-post ; 

 he may be a veritable cherub with a halo, or only a mile-stone 

 in the sun ; yet he is there. His name ? Go-Ahead-and-Help- 

 Yourself is his name. If you trudge through the dust and the 

 mire of the highway to the fork in the road, there help will 

 come in the shape of a sign-board, perhaps ; always in a short- 

 ened distance remaining. 



It might be well for some micvoscopists to remember the angel 

 at the cross-roads, and go to meet him. To use the instrument 

 for anything but the merest amusement is not a light task. It 

 demands care, and much study, and delicate perceptions, and 

 cultivated eyes, and precision of movement, and steady nerves, 

 and healthy brain, and willingness to work like a galley-slave, 

 and love of Nature, and an acquaintance with the angel at the 

 cross-i'oads. Does it pay? Said Jeffries Wyman, " I think that 

 the most happy and heart-filling thing in the world is to come 

 face to face with something which no one but God ever saw 

 before." 



Man}' beginners go to the microscope without an understand- 

 ing of the necessary conditions. They seem to forget that to 

 conquer anything means hard work. The depravity of inani- 

 mate things is appalling, but they can be reformed. The micro- 

 scope will at first seem to pull one way, while its owner is tug- 

 ging the other. The mirror, with fiendish glee, will refuse to 

 reflect the light anywhere. Thin covers will smash themselves. 

 The water drops will run out of the cell and trickle down the 

 stage. The pinions will get loose and the body will slip. Every-. 



