those days. But in your last Edinburgh lecture it seems to me
that the spirit of God has come upon you to lead captivity captive. (I
think that is such a beautiful sentence I can't help putting it in a
letter to you, because I would like to write to you in beautiful words.)
I would like to quote some more of the Bible to you, but you can read it
for yourself. The fifth chapter of the second book of Kings--the story
of Naaman the leper. I am the servant maid in that story, and I've just
discovered that I've been trying to cure my lord's illness with lumps of
cotton-wool. There is someone at home in Scotland who sends me all your
lectures, and when I read the last ones I felt that you were the prophet
in Samaria. I hear that you are lecturing in Sydney soon. I would come
to hear you, but I can't leave my little kingdom here. And I don't think
they'd approve of my small son at a University lecture. He is only two,
and very busy always. I feel that, if I could talk to you, I should see
a great light; you seem such a very shining person to me. And I'm a
duffer. A well-meaning duffer with a task before her that needs brains.
You talk of the socialization of knowledge--will you begin the
socialization on my behalf? I wonder if you would like to see what life
in the Bush is like, you who are a student of life? Then you could show
me where Jordan is nowadays.

"This is very sincere, this request. I shall not be offended if you
think it isn't, but I shall feel that there is no more light in the sky.
I'd got resigned to failure when I read your lectures, and they wakened
me to hope again, because they showed me that I've done every possible
thing wrong. If you do come, please write a very long time in advance
because we are thirty miles from the station and only go in for letters
occasionally. If you can't come, I'll go on worrying with the lectures
until I understand without you.

"Yours sincerely,
MARCELLA LASHCAIRN FARNE."

She fastened the letter up in between two books. It was three months
before she read in a week-old Sydney "Sunday Times" that Professor
Kraill, the eminent biologist, "whose fame in his newer field of
research had preceded him to the Antipodes," was to lecture at Sydney
University during the next three months. Marcella did not open the
letter; she posted it to Sydney University and left the issue in the
hands of the forces that had made her write it.

Professor Kraill got it when he was being bored to de