36 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



of it found its way into the newspapers, and my friend 

 had been reading the same. When I discovered the key 

 to the riddle, I fear I was rather naughty as I remembered 

 the unrest my good friend's note had occasioned me, and 

 I said rather sharply, " Mr. A., I was called to give the 

 lecture at Mr. Spurgeon's Orphanage, and I went; and 

 I would go and lecture on a dust-heap if only I thought I 

 could do any good on it." " Yes, dear Crowther," said my 

 friend, with a seraphic smile, "that would be all very 

 well, provided only it were a Church of England dust- 

 heap!" 



Many other curious results, ending -in the production 

 of these books this forming the tenth volume might be 

 mentioned. One, the best of all, must close this chapter, 

 which may have been too selfish. 



Eight or nine years since, while staying at a very 

 dear friend's house in the most lovely part of Kent, 

 where, for many years, I had been in the habit of lending 

 a helping hand in instructing the people in a handsomely 

 furnished lecture-room, which my large-hearted friend 

 had built, he said to me, " It is a great pity you should 

 not publish your stories. What is to become of them, 

 when you are gone ? " 



" Ah, H I said, " no one would care to read such lectures 



as mine." 



" Wouldn't they ? " he replied. " I should ! " 

 On my way home I thought it over, and the result 

 was that, having the very highest esteem for the Sunday 

 School Union, for which I had many times lectured, I made 

 the committee the gratuitous offer of all my stories, to 

 be rewritten by myself in a popular form, so that they 

 should make a readable book for the public, and at the 

 same time contain the matter necessary for the lecture 

 committee to continue the stories with my own diagrams 



