There was a Scandinavian society in Jamestown, composed
chiefly of workingmen whose fight with life had left them little
enough time for schooling. They were anxious to learn, however, and
as I was set on teaching where I saw the chance, the thing came of
itself. I had been mightily interested in the Frenchman Figuier's
account of the formation and development of the earth, and took
that for my topic. Twice a week, when I had set my traps in the
glen, I went to town and talked astronomy and geology to interested
audiences that gazed terror stricken at the loathsome saurians and
the damnable pterodactyl which I sketched on the blackboard. Well
they might. I spared them no gruesome detail, and I never could
draw, anyhow. However, I rescued them from those beasts in season,
and together we hauled the earth through age-long showers of molten
metal into the sunlight of our day. I sometimes carried home as
much as two or three dollars, after paying for gas and hall, with
the tickets ten cents apiece, and I saw wealth and fame ahead of
me, when sudden wreck came to my hopes and my career as a lecturer.
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