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among themselves, evidently to determine whether this equivocal apology was to be accepted. Apparently it was, for Dr Johnson now asked loftily and with an abstracted air, as though he already knew the answer and considered it beneath notice, "What was this magic formula you caused to be put on the grass?" Malicious spirits averred that Dickie Johnson had flunked out of agricultural school, had an obscure European diploma, and that his fame as a professor at Creighton University was based on the gleaming granite and stainless steel building dedicated to research in agronomy which bore the legend "Johnson Foundation" over the entrance. No one hearing him pronounce "magic formula" putting into the word all the contempt of the scientist for the quack, could ever put credence in the base slander. "What was this 'magic formula' you caused to be put on the grass?" he repeated. Miss Francis reeled off a list of elements so swiftly I'm sure no one but the stenographer caught them all. I know I didnt get more than half, though I was sitting less than five feet from her. "Magnesium," she stated, "iodine, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, potash, sulphur, oxygen ..." Dr Johnson seemed to have known its composition since grammarschool days. Senator Jones asked, "And what effect did you expect this extraordinary conglomeration to have?" She repeated what she had told me at first and the deductions she had made since. Dr Johnson smiled. "A true Man of Science," he stated, "one who has labored for years to acquire those degrees you affect to despise, would have been trained in selfless devotion to the service of mankind, would never have made whatever gross error your ignorance, heightened by projection into a sphere for which you are probably biologically unfitted--though this is perhaps controversial--has betrayed you into. For had you freely shared your work with colleagues they would have been able to correct your mistakes and this catastrophe brought on by selfish greed--a catastrophe which has already cost millions--would not have occurred." The entire committee, including Dr Johnson himself, seemed pleased with this indictment. Attorney General Smith looked inquiringly at the witness as though inviting her to answer _that_ if she could. Miss Francis evidently took the invitation literally, for she addressed herself directly to Dr Johnson. "I do not know, Doctor, where these beautiful and eminently sensible ide
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