as Smith is must be beset with requests of all kinds. Now it is an inventor needing capital; again it is some visionary who comes to advocate a brilliant scheme which must surely yield millions of profit. A choice has to be made between these projects, rejecting the worthless, examining the questionable ones, accepting the meritorious. To this work Mr. Smith devotes every day two full hours. 

 The callers were fewer to-day than usual—only twelve of them. Of these, eight had only impracticable schemes to propose. In fact, one of them wanted to revive painting, an art fallen into desuetude owing to the progress made in color-photography. Another, a physician, boasted that he had discovered a cure for nasal catarrh! These impracticables were dismissed in short order. Of the four projects favorably received, the first was that of a young man whose broad forehead betokened his intellectual power. 

 "Sir, I am a chemist," he began, "and as such I come to you." 

 "Well!" 

 "Once the elementary bodies," said the young chemist, "were held to be sixty-two in number; a hundred years ago they were reduced to ten; now only three remain irresolvable, as you are aware." 

 "Yes, yes." 

 "Well, sir, these also I will show to be composite. In a few months, a few weeks, I shall have succeeded in solving the problem. Indeed, it may take only a few days." 

 "And then?" 

 "Then, sir, I shall simply have determined the absolute. All I want is money enough to carry my research to a successful issue." 

 "Very well," said Mr. Smith. "And what will be the practical outcome of your discovery?" 

 "The practical outcome? Why, that we shall be able to produce easily all bodies whatever—stone, wood, metal, fibers—" 

 "And flesh and blood?" queried Mr. Smith, interrupting him. "Do you pretend that you expect to manufacture a human being out and out?" 

 "Why not?" 

 Mr. Smith advanced $100,000 to the young chemist, and engaged his services for the Earth Chronicle laboratory. 

 The second of the four successful applicants, starting from experiments made so long ago as the nineteenth century and again 

 Prev. P 11/15 next