So they begin. Seraphic cherubim of lay–
choristers bend to their work. Dean swells
egg–like. And now, indeed, for Smith, R.A.M.,
greatest organist and accomplished artist!
Extinguish for ever the memory of Twingles,
if you can. Wretched fellow, his sorry heart is
all twittering and fluttering, and pit–pat! To
say the truth, he has never had much
acquaintance with organ–work; the Roman
letters will not teach him that. He is
nervous, and Silbermann seems to eye him
askance, like a horse that has changed
masters, and means mischief. Now, then, young
Smith—to it, my musical man! Seraphic
chaunting is stopped—bellows are full. Begin
with vigour and spirit!

O wretched quavering! most feeble tootle!
No courageous attack; no fiery manipulation;
no divine afflatus; nothing but a
smooth, even, contemptible fingering. The
pedals are too much for him; the full–stops
he is afraid of. Old Silbermann must be
laughing contemptuously at him. It is a
fiasco—a complete fiasco, and Doctor Dilly
hangs his head for shame. Smith, R.A.M., is
great, doubtless, on Belgravian and Tyburnian
pianos running liquid rain–showers, and froth
of the sea and cascades (he having indeed
published many secret little pieces for young
ladies, bearing those names); but for grand
Silbermann and his fellows, he is the smallest
pigmy. Some say he has broken down; others
that he shuffled through, somehow; but the
noble person, Lord Rufus' relation, oaths it
that he is a pure botch! which, of course, is
final on the matter.

But while this opinion is being ratified
over Doctor Diily's claret, at about eight
o'clock that Sunday night (and it was a very,
very cold night, too), some shuffling sounds
of footsteps are heard upon the stairs. The
Dean's own body man, a very proper person, is
struggling with some intruder, and objects
naturally to the sacred privacy of the claret
being broken in upon. It shall be—must be
—broken in upon if it was the king himself,
and a ghastly while face, plainly but lately
lifted from a sick–pillow, bursts in. The noble
persons present are, naturally enough,
appalled. Doctor Dilly thinks it a spectre. It
was not a spectre, however, but the Reverend
Mr. Maydew. How he told his story, to
the effect that he, lying ill, for some days
back, had rushed from his bed—travelling
express—to repair wrong and injustice, as
soon as the story of this innocent organist
reached him, will perhaps have been divined
readily enough, by such as have followed this
little chronicle.

To say the truth, our Dean was a little
ashamed, and not disinclined to do justice.
And when the noble kinsman, with a thump
on the table, swore that it was a fine thing
as ever he had seen; and that, as far as he
was concerned, they should have the old
organ–grinder back by next post, he was glad
enough to yield handsomely, nay, even passed
over Maydew's share in the business. Even
Deans  have good corners in their hearts.
And so our good Twingle did really return,
making a sort of triumphal re–entry, and sat
again in the rookery, where he has sat ever
since, as Sundays and festivals come round;
and where, of this pleasant New Year's
morning, eighteen hundred and fifty–nine,
he has played out the old congregation, on
the ripened, mellow, and most harmonious
pipes of his dear Dutch organ.

       THE FATHER OF CAOUTCHOUC

IN eighteen hundred and nineteen, two
men, unknown to each other, were
simultaneously busied in making experiments on
caoutchouc, or india–rubber, These were
Charles Macintosh and Thomas Hancock:
the first of whom is the father of macintoshes,
and the latter the father of caoutchouc. It
was only by slow degrees that rubber rose
from its sole office of effacing the pencil–
marks of schoolboys and artists; for, though
Hancock had often wondered why more was
not made of a substance with such varied
properties, he had not attempted to find the
answer for himself before the year we have
mentioned. And as for Mr Macintosh, even
his first essays, which led to such
complete success, were brought about by an
accident dependent on the manufacture of
coal–gas.

When coal–gas was first made, the tar and
other liquid products accruing accumulated
on the manufacturers' hands to a troublesome
extent, no one knowing well what to do
with them. Mr. Macintosh thought he could
find a use of them in the manufacture of
cudbear—a dye obtained from a lichen
(Lecanora tartarea), and contracted with the
Glasgow gas–works for all their tar and
ammoniacal water. In his operations he
found that when the ammonia was separated
and the tar converted into pitch, the essential
oil, called naphtha, was left behind, and it
occurred to him that this could be made
available as a solution for caoutchouc. He
made the experiment, and the result was a
waterproof garment, thick or thin according
to the amount of naphtha used; which waterproof
varnish he used in the manufacture of
the famous macintoshes of our youth. His
patent was taken out in eighteen hundred
and twenty–three, and merited the fame and
fortune it brought.

Mr Hancock knew nothing of this
discovery. He was meditating and working in
his own way, though indeed his initial
experiment was made but vaguely, and only on
the broad belief that "something must
eventually be done with so singular a substance."
This experiment was an attempt to dissolve
caoutchouc in oil of turpentine; but to no
good result; the solutions being too thin
and drying very ill, or rather not drying at
all. Failing in this, he then applied the