the centre of the room.  It was always strewn with magnifying-glasses, proofs, printers’ slips, negatives—­the litter of a palaeographic student.  There were three or four wooden chairs for the benefit of scholarly friends, and an armchair upholstered in green rep near the stove.  In a corner stood the most striking, perhaps the only striking, object in the room—­a huge mummy from the Fayyum.  The canopic jars and outer coffins belonging to it were still unpacked in the freight cases.  It had been purchased from a bankrupt Armenian dealer in Cairo along with a number of Graeco-Egyptian antiquities and papyri, of far greater interest to the Professor than the mummy itself.  As soon as the interior was examined it was to be presented to the Museum; but more entertaining and important studies delayed its removal.  For many months, with a curious grave smile, the face on the shell seemed to look down with amused and permanent interest on Professor Lachsyrma struggling with the orthography of some forgotten scribe, and arguing with a friend on mutilated or corrupt passages in a Greek palimpsest.

Here, late one afternoon, Professor Lachsyrma was deciphering some yellow leaves of papyrus.  The dusk was falling, and he laid down the pen with which he was delicately transcribing uncials on sheets of foolscap, in order to light a lamp on the table.  It was 6.30 by an irritating little American clock recently presented him by one of his children, noisy symbol and only indication that he held commune with a modern life he so heartily despised.  As the housekeeper entered with some tea he took up a copy of a morning paper (a violent transition from uncials), and glanced at the first lines of the leader: 

The Trustees of the British Museum announce one of the most sensational literary discoveries in recent years, a discovery which must startle the world of scholars, and even the apathetic public at large.  This is none other than the recovery of the long-lost poems of Sappho, manuscripts of which were last heard of in the tenth century, when they were burnt at Rome and Byzantium.  We shall have to go back to the fifteenth century, to the Fall of Constantinople, to the Revival of Learning, ere we can find a fitting parallel to match the importance of this recent find.  Not since the spade of the excavator uncovered from its shroud of earth the flawless beauty of the Olympian Hermes has such a delightful acquisition been made to our knowledge of Greek literature.  The name of Professor Lachsyrma has long been one to conjure with, and all of us should experience pleasure (where surprise in his case is out of the question) on learning that his recent tour to Egypt, besides greatly benefiting his health, was the means of restoring to eager posterity one of the most precious monuments of Hellenic culture.

‘Dear me, I had no idea the press could be so entertaining,’ thought the Professor, as a smile of satisfaction spread over his well-chiselled face.