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Updated: June 21, 2025
It was so deucedly unexpected and, my dear fellow, you've brought it so exactly to the right shop." "I'm glad to hear you say so," said the Professor modestly. Harviss laughed in rich appreciation. "I don't suppose you had a doubt of it; but of course I was quite unprepared. And it's so extraordinarily out of your line " The Professor took off his glasses and rubbed them with a slow smile.
It was the world in which the powers who fought for the Professor were destined to wage their final battle; and for the moment he had no doubt of the outcome. The next day he went to town to see Harviss. He wanted to ask for an advance on the new popular edition of "The Vital Thing."
But Harviss had probably reflected that even in this reverberating age the opinions of the laboratory do not easily reach the street; and the Professor, at any rate, was not bound to offer advice on this point. The determining cause of his consent was the fact that the book was already in press.
The Professor, who had risen and moved to the door, turned back with a wavering step. "When did you say another volume would have to be ready?" he faltered. "I said October but call it a month later. You don't need any pushing nowadays." "And you'd have no objection to letting me have a little advance now? I need some new instruments for my real work." Harviss extended a cordial hand.
"Would you have thought it so at college?" Harviss stared. "At college? Why, you were the most iconoclastic devil " There was a perceptible pause. The Professor restored his glasses and looked at his friend. "Well ?" he said simply. "Well ?" echoed the other, still staring. "Ah I see; you mean that that's what explains it. The swing of the pendulum, and so forth.
"Well?" murmured the other, fascinated. "why shouldn't the rest of the world?" declared Harviss boldly. "I represent the Average Reader that's my business, that's what I've been training myself to do for the last twenty years. It's a mission like another the thing is to do it thoroughly; not to cheat and compromise.
As a satire, the book would have brought its author nothing; in fact, its cost would have come out of his own pocket, since, as Harviss assured him, no publisher would have risked taking it. But as a profession of faith, as the recantation of an eminent biologist, whose leanings had hitherto been supposed to be toward a cold determinism, it would bring in a steady income to author and publisher.
Meanwhile it fortunately happened that, even if the book should achieve the kind of triumph prophesied by Harviss, it would not appreciably injure its author's professional standing. Professor Linyard was known chiefly as a microscopist.
The offer found the Professor in a moment of financial perplexity. His illness, his unwonted holiday, the necessity of postponing a course of well-paid lectures, had combined to diminish his resources; and when Harviss offered him an advance of a thousand dollars the esoteric savour of the joke became irresistible.
Most people think 'The Vital Thing' 's serious." "Yes but I mean something different." "In your old line beetles and so forth?" "Yes," said the Professor solemnly. Harviss looked at him with equal gravity. "Well, I'm sorry for that," he said, "because it takes you out of our bailiwick. But I suppose you've made enough money out of 'The Vital Thing' to permit yourself a little harmless amusement.
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