igure, with the beautiful, kindly face set in
white hair and beard, has surely sat for the familiar portrait of Alfred
Russel Wallace. This short, thick-set, robust, business-like figure is
that of Sir Norman Lockyer. Yonder frail-seeming scholar, with white
beard, is surely Professor Crookes. And this other scholar, with tall,
rather angular frame and most kindly gleam of eye, is Sir Michael
Foster; and there beyond is the large-seeming though not tall figure,
and the round, rosy, youthful-seeming, beautifully benevolent face of
Lord Lister. "What! a real lord there?" said a little American girl to
whom I enumerated the company after my first visit to the Royal Society.
"Then how did he act? Was he very proud and haughty, as if he could not
speak to other people?" And I was happy to be able to reply that though
Lord Lister, perhaps of all men living, would be most excusable did he
carry in his manner the sense of his achievements and honors, yet in
point of fact no man could conceivably be more free from any apparent
self-consciousness. As one watches him now he is seen to pass from group
to group with cordial hand-shake and pleasant word, clearly the most
affable of men, lord though he be, and president of the Royal Society,
and foremost scientist of his time.

Presently an attendant passed through the tearoom bearing a tremendous
silver mace, perhaps five feet long, surmounted by a massive crown and
cross, and looking like nothing so much as a "gigantic war-club."
This is the mace which, when deposited on the president's desk in the
lecture-room beyond, will signify that the society is in session. "It is
the veritable mace," some one whispers at your elbow, "concerning which
Cromwell gave his classical command to 'Remove that bauble.'" But since
the mace was not made until 1663, some five years after Cromwell's
death, this account may lack scientific accuracy. Be that as it may,
this mace has held its own far more steadily than the fame of its
alleged detractor, and its transportation through the tea-room is the
only manner of announcement that the lecture is about to open in the
hall beyond. Indeed, so inconspicuous is the proceeding, and so quietly
do the members that choose to attend pass into the lecture-hall, leaving
perhaps half the company engaged as before, that the "stranger "--as
the non-member is here officially designated--might very readily fail
to understand that the seance proper had begun. In any event