soon a very neat and concise little affair was arranged, and when I read it out loud in several tones of voice for the sake of practice, it met each time with the universal approbation of the family.
I sent it in next day, addressed to the chairman, feeling sure that it would increase the really paternal favour with which he regarded me; and this little responsibility being off my hands, and my family leaving London for the sea-side, I gave myself up entirely to my friends for the rest of the week.
At length, on the evening of the day which preceded the general meeting of the shareholders, I received a note from Mr. Chairman (who, it appeared, had just returned to town from a Somersetshire watering-place), saying that my report was too short and matter-of-fact, too drily scientific, and that another should be immediately written, which, besides the invaluable quality of truth, should possess a little of the elegance of fiction; that it was all very well to confine myself to mere technicalities in my private correspondence with him and his brother directors, to whom the arcana of science were no mystery, but that many of the gentlemen who would hear this report on the following day were not fitted by education to understand it; that, in short, I must know very well the sort of thing he meant, and he relied entirely upon my intelligence and good-will.
Now that very evening I was going to a musical party, which I would not have missed on any consideration, and should have thought it very hard to give up such a classical treat, merely because nature had endowed Mr. Chairman with a poetical constitution; so I quietly popped the report into another envelope, and sent it back, with a polite message to the effect that I would be most happy to develope my theories by vivâ voce explanation the following day.
The musical party lasted all night, and I confess that the exciting effect of “Down among the Dead Men,” and the “Holy Friar,” and other compositions, had scarcely subsided by the time fixed for the meeting of the shareholders on the morrow. I was very punctual, however, and walked calmly into the board-room, where I indicated myself in a series of bows. Many were assembled there, and their faces were “ashen and sober as the leaves that are crispèd and sere,” as I observed to the chairman. He was not at all in a mood, however, for that sort of thing, and seemed exceedingly stiff and formal; the muse had evidently quite forsaken him. I soon felt that the business of the day was no longer to be characterised by that idyllic tenderness I had found so pleasant down in Blankshire; the other directors looked very grave; the mild eyes of the military gentleman were filled with dismay. There were several gentlemen present whom I had never seen, but whom I recognised as shareholders by the length of their faces. The only face in which I saw anything like cordiality or facetiousness was that of my friend the engineer, whom I immediately greeted in the most impulsive manner.
Sheets of foolscap and blotting paper were ominously laid out on the table before each place.
Presently one of my predecessors in the chemical business of the mine, the eminent analytical chemist Mr. Ex, made his appearance, and to him I was introduced, but he chose to acknowledge my very respectful salutation with contemptuous indifference. I immediately made a mental estimate of his weight. Shortly after, Mr. Zed, my other eminent rival, walked in, and he did not acknowledge my respectful salutation at all. The caricatures I made of them both on my sheet of blotting-paper were afterwards pronounced first-rate by my friend the engineer.
We sat down in stormy silence; I was at the right hand of the chairman, and supported the military gentleman on my other side. The other directors filled their respective places at the board, and the shareholders stood or sat all about the room.
The chairman opened the proceedings by a sort of general statement of things, which appeared to me rather confused. It comprised, however, a very plausible account of all that had been done before I was employed, and of all the money that had been spent, and how; and it took a very long time to deliver.
It enlarged on the zeal, cleverness, and inestimable services of my friend the engineer, who rose and acknowledged the compliment with a few smiling, gentlemanlike, and appropriate words; after which he made a kind of comprehensive bow all round, the elegance of which I have never seen surpassed, and then he left the room.
Mr. Chairman then expatiated on the admirable and necessarily expensive manner in which Messrs. Zed & Ex had fulfilled their parts; how, owing to circumstances which he thought it unnecessary to enter into then, their efforts had not met with the success they deserved; how, at length, they had decided upon availing themselves of my assistance in spite of my extreme youth; how he and the other directors, waiving all considerations of personal convenience, had gone down to the mine themselves, and at their own expense, to see that I had managed everything properly; how, in short, I had done everything they had suggested in the most careful and conscientious manner, and how they had been led thereby to the conclusions which would be found, not so much in my report, which I had thought fit to make exceedingly short and technical, as in the explanations which I had kindly volunteered to give vivâ voce.
He then read my report, which stated the nature of the experiments performed by me from first to last, and their complete failure, and ascribed the cause thereof to the fact that gold did not exist in the Victoria Gold and Copper Mines. I thought it sounded very nice, and that the chairman had a very impressive voice, and read it beautifully. I was especially struck with the dignity with which I had invested the mud-pie experiments by describing them scientifically.
When he had finished, nobody asked for a vivâ voce explanation of my eloquent little composition, which everybody appeared to understand perfectly well; but the chairman said that I was desirous of adding a few remarks, and