Newton's Binomial Theorem 



excuse for this venial sin ! Let me confess the 

 temporary embezzlement. 



Life at my college is more or less cloistered. 

 In return for a modest payment, most of us 

 masters are lodged in the building; and we 

 take our meals at the principal's table. The 

 science-master, who is the big gun of the staff 

 and lives in the town, has nevertheless, like 

 ourselves, his own two cells, in addition to a 

 balcony, or leads, where the chemical prepara- 

 tions give forth their suffocating gases in the 

 open air. For this reason, he finds it more 

 convenient to hold his class here during the 

 greater part of the year. The boys come to 

 these rooms in winter, in front of a grate 

 stuffed full of coke, like mine, and there find 

 a blackboard, a pneumatic trough, a mantel- 

 piece covered with glass receivers, panoplies 

 of bent tubes on the walls, and, lastly, a cert- 

 ain cupboard in which I remember seeing a 

 row of books, the oracles consulted by the 

 master in the course of his lessons. 



'Among those books,' said I to myself, 

 'there is sure to be one on alegebra. To ask 

 the owner for the loan of it does not appeal 

 to me. My amiable colleague would receive 

 me superciliously and laugh at my ambitious 

 aims. I am sure he would refuse my request.' 



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