the fool who prefers to lie a bed, and to dream rather than to live?
What! and you, strong man, with those noble limbs, in this den! Do you
not long for a rush through the green of the fields, a bath in the blue of
the river?"

Here he came to a pause, standing, still in the gray light of the growing
day, with eyes whose joyous lustre forestalled the sun's, and lips which
seemed to laugh even in repose.

But presently those eyes, as quick as they were bright, glanced over the
walls, the floor, the shelves, the phials, the mechanical inventions, and
then rested full on my cylinder fixed to the table. He approached,
examined it curiously, asked what it was. I explained. To gratify him I
sat down and renewed my experiment, with equally ill success. The needle,
which should have moved from west to south, describing an angle of from
thirty degrees to forty or even fifty degrees, only made a few troubled,
undecided oscillations.

"Tut," cried the young man, "I see what it is; you have a wound in your
right hand."

That was true; I had burned my band a few days before in a chemical
experiment, and the sore had not healed.

"Well," said I, "and what does that matter?"

"Everything; the least scratch in the skin of the hand produces chemical
actions on the electric current, independently of your will. Let me try."

He took my place, and in a moment the needle in the galvanometer responded