A Slip Under the Microscope

Outside the laboratory windows was a watery-grey fog, and within a close
warmth and the yellow light of the green-shaded gas lamps that stood two
to each table down its narrow length. On each table stood a couple of
glass jars containing the mangled vestiges of the crayfish, mussels,
frogs, and guinea-pigs upon which the students had been working, and down
the side of the room, facing the windows, were shelves bearing bleached
dissections in spirits, surmounted by a row of beautifully executed
anatomical drawings in white-wood frames and overhanging a row of cubical
lockers. All the doors of the laboratory were panelled with blackboard,
and on these were the half-erased diagrams of the previous day's work. The
laboratory was empty, save for the demonstrator, who sat near the
preparation-room door, and silent, save for a low, continuous murmur and
the clicking of the rocker microtome at which he was working. But
scattered about the room were traces of numerous students: hand-bags,
polished boxes of instruments, in one place a large drawing covered by
newspaper, and in another a prettily bound copy of _News from
Nowhere_, a book oddly at variance with its surroundings. These things
had been put down hastily as the students had arrived and hurried at once
to secure their seats in the adjacent lecture theatre. Deadened by the
closed door, the measured accents of the professor sounded as a
featureless muttering.

Presently, faint through the closed windows came the sound of the Oratory
clock striking the hour of eleven. The clicking of the microtome ceased,
and the demonstrator looked at his watch, rose, thrust his hands into his
pockets, and walked slowly down the laboratory towards the lecture theatre
door. He stood listening for a moment, and then his eye fell on the little
volume by William Morris. He picked it up, glanced at the title, smiled,
opened it, looked at the name on the fly-leaf, ran the leaves through with
his hand, and put it down. Almost immediately the even murmur of the
lecturer ceased, there was a sudden burst of pencils rattling on the desks
in the lecture theatre, a stirring, a scraping of feet, and a number of
voices speaking together. Then a firm footfall approached the door, which
began to open, and stood ajar, as some indistinctly heard question
arrested the new-comer.

The demonstrator turned, walked slowly back past the microtome, and left
the laboratory by the preparation-room door. As he did so, first one, and
then several students carrying notebooks entered the laboratory from the
lecture theatre, and distributed themselves among the little tables, or
stood in a group about the doorway. They were an exceptionally
heterogeneous assembly, for while Oxford and Cambridge still recoil