"Then, as shells are not familiar to the youthful remembrances of your
fellow-townsmen, possibly the lecturer may have found an audience rather
select than numerous."

"It was a very attentive audience, sir, and highly respectable: Miss
Grieve's young ladies' (the genteelest seminary in the town) attended."

WAIFE.--"Highly creditable to the young ladies. But, pardon me, is your
Athenaeum a Mechanics' institute?"

SHOPMAN.--"It was so called at first. But, somehow or other, the mere
operatives fell off, and it was thought advisable to change the word
'Mechanics' into the word 'Literary.' Gatesboro' is not a manufacturing
town, and the mechanics here do not realize the expectations of that
taste for abstract science on which the originators of these societies
founded their--"

WAIFE (insinuatingly interrupting).--"Their calculations of intellectual
progress and their tables of pecuniary return. Few of these societies,
I am told, are really self-supporting: I suppose Professor Long is!--and
if he resides in Gatesboro', and writes on limpets, he is probably a man
of independent fortune."

SHOPMAN.--"Why, sir, the professor was engaged from London,--five guineas
and his travelling expenses. The funds of the society could ill afford
such outlay; but we have a most worthy mayor, who, assisted by his
foreman, Mr. Williams, our treasurer, is, I may say, the life and soul
of the institute."

"A literary man himself, your mayor?"