ufferer, whom he was visiting
in hospital. The young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in
Paterson's Rants, and had found it, as he more or less expected, the
conventional den of the needy inventor. Our large towns are full of
such persons. They are the Treasure Hunters of cities and of
civilization--the modern seekers for the Philosopher's Stone. At the end
of a vista of dreams they behold the great Discovery made perfect, and
themselves the winners of fame and of wealth incalculable.

For the present, most of these visionaries are occupied with
electricity. They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every
house, and to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of
Winter's den in Paterson's Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was
set on a more ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made,
which lined every wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics,
and especially on the art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of
the fourpenny box of cheap bookvendors mixed with volumes in better
condition, purchased at a larger cost. Here--among the litter of
tattered pamphlets and well-thumbed "Proceedings" of the Linnean and the
Aeronautic Society of Great Britain--here were Fredericus Hermannus' "De
Arte Volandi," and Cayley's works, and Hatton Turner's "Astra Castra,"
and the "Voyage to the Moon" of Cyrano de Bergerac, and Bishop Wilkins's
"Daedalus," and the same sanguine prelate's "Mercury, The Secret
Messenger." Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a shabby set of the
classics, mostly in French translations, and a score of lucubrations
by French and other inventors--Ponton d'Amocourt, Borelli, Chabrier,
Girard, and Marey.

Even if his books had not shown the direction of the new patient's
mind--(a man is known by his books at least as much as by his
companions, and companions Winter had none)--even if the shelves had
not spoken clearly, the models and odds-and-ends in the room would have
proclaimed him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library,
and as the floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and
periodicals, a quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the
ceiling.

Barton, who was more than commonly tall, found his head being buffeted
by big preserved wings of birds and other flying things--from the
sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery covering of the bat.
From the ceiling, too, hung models, cleverly constructed in various