XV 



THE METHOD OF WORK 385 



called it, which put him off for the whole day. He 

 left the house about nine, and from that time till 

 midnight at earliest was incessantly busy. His 

 regular lectures involved an immensity of labour, 

 for he would never make a statement in them which 

 he had not personally verified by experiment. In 

 the Jermyn Street days he habitually made prepara- 

 tions to illustrate the points on which he was lecturing, 

 for his students had no laboratory in which to work 

 out the things for themselves. His lectures to 

 working-men also involved as much careful prepara- 

 tion as the more conspicuous discourses at the Royal 

 Institution. 



This thoroughness of preparation had no less 

 effect on the teacher than on the taught. He writes 

 to an old pupil : — 



It is pleasant when the "bread cast upon the water" 

 returns after many days ; and if the crumbs given in 

 my lectures have had anything to do with the success 

 on which I congratulate you, I am very glad, 



I used to say of my own lectures that if nobody else 

 learned anything from them, I did ; because I always 

 took a great deal of pains over them. But it is none 

 the less satisfactory to find that there were other learners. 



As for the ordinary course of a day's work, the 

 more fitful energy and useless mornings of the 

 earliest period in London were soon left behind. 

 He was never one of those portentously early risers 

 who do a fair day's work before other people are 

 up; there was only one period, about 1873, when 



VOL. Ill 2 C 



