Professor Caldwell sat for a full minute, silent and fingering his watch chain.
"Do you know," he said at last, "I've had that same criticism passed on me once before--by a very great man, a scientist and evolutionist, Joseph Le Conte.

But he is dead, and I thought to remain undetected; and now you come along and expose me.

Seriously, though--and this is confession--I think there is something in your contention--a great deal, in fact.

I am too classical, not enough up-to-date in the interpretative branches of science, and I can only plead the disadvantages of my education and a temperamental slothfulness that prevents me from doing the work.

I wonder if you'll believe that I've never been inside a physics or chemistry laboratory?
It is true, nevertheless.