at
present, the most unpleasant thing that money can convert itself into--an
object.

Adams was six feet two, a Vermonter, an American gentleman whose chest
measurements were big, almost, as his instincts were fine. He had fought
his way up, literally from the soil, putting in terms as seaside _cafe_
waiter to help to pay his college fees; putting aside everything but
honour in his grand struggle to freedom and individual existence, and
finishing his college career with a travelling scholarship which brought
him to Paris.

Individualism, the thing that lends something of greatness to each
American, but which does not tend to the greatness of the nation, was the
mainspring of this big man whom Nature had undoubtedly designed with her
eye on the vast plains, virgin forests, and unfordable rivers, and across
whose shoulder one half divined the invisible axe of the pioneer.

He was just twenty-three years of age, yet he looked thirty: plain enough
as far as features go, his face was a face to remember in time of trouble.
It was of the American type that approximates to the Red Indian, and you
guessed the power that lay behind it by the set of the cheek-bones, the
breadth of the chin and the restfulness of the eyes. Like the Red Indian,
Paul Quincy Adams was slow of speech. A silent man with his tongue.

He entered the hospital and passed down a long corridor to the cloakroom,
where he left his overcoat and from there, by another corridor, he found
his way to the swing-door of the lecture theatre. It wanted five minutes
to the hour. He peeped over the muffing of the glass; the place was nearly
full, so he went in and took his seat, choosing one at the right hand end
of the first row of the stalls--students' vernacular for the lowest row of
the theatre benches.

The theatre was lit with gas. It had whitewashed walls bare as the walls
of a barn; a permanent blackboard faced the audience, and the air was
suffocatingly hot after the crisp, cold air of the streets. It would be
like this till about the middle of the lecture, when Alphonse the porter
would pull the rope of the skylight and ventilate the place with an arctic
blast.

This room, which had once been an anatomical theatre, and always a lecture
room, had known the erect form of Lisfranc; the stooping shoulders of
Majendie had cast their shadow on its walls; Flourens had lectured here on
that subject of which he had so profound a knowledge--the brain; the
echoes of