sympathy interfere with the discharge of his paternal obligations.
He worked hard to keep the wants of his family gratified, and it was
precisely in the endeavor to attain this end that he at length broke
down and had to cease from work altogether.

To cease from work was not to cease from thought of it; and in the
unwonted pause from effort the Professor found himself taking a
general survey of the field he had travelled. At last it was
possible to lift his nose from the loom, to step a moment in front
of the tapestry he had been weaving. From this first inspection of
the pattern so long wrought over from behind, it was natural to
glance a little farther and seek its reflection in the public eye.
It was not indeed of his special task that he thought in this
connection. He was but one of the great army of weavers at work
among the threads of that cosmic woof; and what he sought was the
general impression their labour had produced.

When Professor Linyard first plied his microscope, the audience of
the man of science had been composed of a few fellow-students,
sympathetic or hostile as their habits of mind predetermined, but
versed in the jargon of the profession and familiar with the point
of departure. In the intervening quarter of a century, however, this
little group had been swallowed up in a larger public. Every one now
read scientific books and expressed an opinion on them. The ladies
and the clergy had taken them up first; now they had passed to the
school-room and the kindergarten. Daily life was regulated on
scientific principles; the daily papers had their "Scientific
Jottings"; nurses passed examinations in hygienic science, and
babies were fed and dandled according to the new psychology.