4
Introductory Address
of how not to do it. He began by confessing that he knew nothing of Professor Murray's subject, but went on to explain that he had read it up for the occasion in an Encyclopædia; and thereupon he retailed at great length, and in a most lugubrious fashion, the information he had gleaned from that work of reference. There happened to be two or three anecdotes, manifestly the plums of the subject; and the Chairman must needs put in his thumb and pull out those plums, and spoil them for the lecturer by serving them up with consummate insipidity. What Professor Murray must have suffered in having his subject thus broken on the wheel, I shudder even now to think. His conduct was certainly a noble example of Stoicism. Had I been
