Time has run on a little bit since the professor suffered many
agonies on a certain raw February morning, and now it is the 30th of
May, and a glorious finish too to that sweet month.

Even into this dingy old room, where at a dingy old table the
professor sits buried in piles of notes, and with sheets of
manuscript knee-deep scattered around him, the warm glad sun is
stealing; here and there, the little rays are darting, lighting up a
dusty corner here, a hidden heap of books there. It is, as yet,
early in the afternoon, and the riotous beams, who are no respecter
of persons, and who honor the righteous and the ungodly alike, are
playing merrily in this sombre chamber, given so entirely up to
science and its prosy ways, daring even now to dance lightly on the
professor's head, which has begun to grow a little bald.

"The golden sun, in splendor likest heav'n,"

is proving perhaps a little too much for the tired brain in the
small room. Either that, or the incessant noises in the street
outside, which have now been enriched by the strains of a
broken-down street piano, causes him to lay aside his pen and lean
back in a weary attitude in his chair.

What a day it is! How warm! An hour ago he had delivered a brilliant
lecture on the everlasting Mammoth (a fresh specimen just arrived
from Siberia), and is now paying the penalty of greatness. He had
done well--he knew that--he had been _interesting,_ that surest road
to public favor--he had been applauded to the echo; and now,
worn-out, tired in mind and body, he is living over again his honest
joy in his success.