Everybody, I take it, knows Dr. FUSSELL. He is a member of countless
learned Societies. Over many of them he presides, to some he acts
as secretary. He reads papers on abstruse questions connected with
sanitation, he dashes with a kind of wild war-whoop into impassioned
newspaper controversies on the component elements of a dust particle,
or the civilisation of the Syro-Phoenicians. He is acute, dialectical,
scornful and furious. He denounces those who oppose him as the meanest
of mankind, he extols his supporters as the most illustrious and
reasonable of all who have benefited the human race. In the Club he
is always engaged in some investigation which keeps him continuously
skipping from bookshelf to bookshelf, climbing up ladders to reach
the highest shelves, rushing up and down-stairs with sheaves of paper
bulging in his coat-pockets, or stowed under his arms. He lays his
top-hat on the table, and makes it a receptacle for reams of notes and
volumes of projected essays. In a word, he is a human storm.

Well, in he came with his grey hair streaming over his forehead, and
his eyes aflame. I knew in a moment that repose in his presence was
out of the question, though I still sat on, hoping against hope.
First, the Doctor bounded to the fire-place, seized the poker, and
began to rummage the fire. It was a good fire, and had done nothing
to deserve this punishment. I shifted on my seat; the two other
philosophers opened their eyes and frowned, and still Dr. FUSSELL
continued to rummage. Now I knew, not only that that fire was being
poked on an entirely wrong principle, but that I alone knew how it
ought to be poked. My fingers itched, my whole body tingled with
excitement. At last Dr. FUSSELL ceased. In a moment I was out of my
seat and making a bee-line for the poker. I just managed to beat the
other two by a short head, seized the poker, and relieved my soul
by stirring the fire on strictly scientific principles. The others