How We Encourage Research - Page 2

his attention,
especially now that he had married a "nice little woman" (the generic
name for acquaintances' wives when they are not markedly disagreeable).
He could not, they observed, want all his various knowledge and Laputan
ideas for his periodical writing which brought him most of his bread,
and he would do well to use his talents in getting a speciality that
would fit him for a post. Perhaps these well-disposed persons were a
little rash in presuming that fitness for a post would be the surest
ground for getting it; and on the whole, in now looking back on their
wishes for Merman, their chief satisfaction must be that those wishes
did not contribute to the actual result.

For in an evil hour Merman did concentrate himself. He had for many
years taken into his interest the comparative history of the ancient
civilisations, but it had not preoccupied him so as to narrow his
generous attention to everything else. One sleepless night, however (his
wife has more than once narrated to me the details of an event memorable
to her as the beginning of sorrows), after spending some hours over the
epoch-making work of Grampus, a new idea seized him with regard to the
possible connection of certain symbolic monuments common to widely
scattered races. Merman started up in bed. The night was cold, and the
sudden withdrawal of warmth made his wife first dream of a snowball,
and then cry--

"What is the matter, Proteus?"

"A great matter, Julia. That fellow Grampus, whose book is cried up as a
revelation, is all wrong about the Magicodumbras and the Zuzumotzis, and
I have got hold of the right clue."

"Good gracious! does it matter so much? Don't drag the clothes, dear."

"It signifies this, Julia, that if I am right I shall set the world
right; I shall regenerate history; I shall win the mind of Europe to a
new view of social origins; I shall bruise the head of many
superstitions."

"Oh no, dear, don't go too far into things. Lie down again. You have
been dreaming. What are the Madicojumbras and Zuzitotzums? I never heard
you talk of them before. What use can it be troubling yourself about
such things?"

"That is the way, Julia--that is the way wives alienate their husbands,
and make any hearth pleasanter to him than his own!"

"What _do_ you mean, Proteus?"

"Why, if a woman will not try to understand her husband's ideas, or at
least to believe that they are of more value than she can understand--if
she is to join anybody who happens to be against him, and suppose he is
a fool because others contradict him--there is an end of our happiness.
That is all I have to say."