The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (8.1896)

A Slip under the Microscope

ByH. G. Wells
/^\UTSiDE the laboratory windows was a watery-grey fog, and
within a close warmth and the yellow light of the green-
shaded gas lamps that stood two to each table down its narrow
length. On each table stood a couple of glass jars containing the
mangled vestiges of the crayfish, mussels, frogs, and guinea-pigs,
upon which the students had been working, and down the side of
the room, facing the windows, were shelves bearing bleached dis-
sections in spirits, surmounted by a row of beautifully executed
anatomical drawings in whitewood frames and overhanging a row
of cubical lockers. All the doors of the laboratory were panelled
with blackboard, and on these were the half-erased diagrams of
the previous day's work. The laboratory was empty, save for the
demonstrator, who sat near the preparation-room door, and silent,
save for a low, continuous murmur, and the clicking of the rocker
microtome at which he was working. But scattered about the
room were traces of numerous students : hand-bags, polished boxes
of instruments, in one place a large drawing covered by a news-
paper, and in another a prettily bound copy of ykow
a book oddly at variance with its surroundings. These things
had been put down hastily as the students had arrived and hurried
at once to secure their seats in the adjacent lecture theatre.
Deadened