(The house rises; but of course the lecturer wanted to be forced to lecture again, and was.)

LECTURE 2.

THE PYRAMID BUILDERS

In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been summoned by ringing of the great bell.

L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallization!  I cannot conceive why unless the little ones think that the discussion may involve some reference to sugar-candy.

(Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members of council.  Isabel frowns severely at L., and shakes her head violently.)

My dear children, if you knew it, you are yourselves, at this moment, as you sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye of a mineralogist, but a lovely group of rosy sugar-candy, arranged by atomic forces.  And even admitting you to be something more, you have certainly been crystallizing without knowing it.  Did not I hear a great hurrying and whispering ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the playground; and thought you would not all be quietly seated by the time I was ready:—­besides some discussion about places—­something about “it’s not being fair that the little ones should always be nearest?” Well, you were then all being crystallized.  When you ran in from the garden, and against one another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence; when you got seated in those orderly rows, each in her proper place, you became crystalline.  That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can, whenever they get disordered:  they get into order again as soon as may be.

I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, “But we know our places; how do the atoms know theirs?  And sometimes we dispute about our places; do the atoms—­(and, besides, we don’t like being compared to atoms at all)—­never dispute about theirs?” Two wise questions these, if you had a mind to put them! it was long before I asked them myself, of myself.  And I will not call you atoms any more.  May I call you—­let me see—­“primary molecules?” (General dissent indicated in subdued but decisive murmurs.) No! not even, in familiar Saxon, “dust”?

(Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt; lily gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid “Please don’t.”)

No, children, I won’t call you that; and mind, as you grow up, that you do not get into an idle and wicked habit of calling yourselves that.  You are something better than dust, and have other duties to do than ever dust can do; and the bonds of affection you will enter into are better than merely “getting in to order.”  But see to it, on the other hand, that you always behave at least as well as “dust;” remember, it is only on compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes, that it ever gets out of order; but sometimes, with some of us, the compulsion has to be the other way—­hasn’t it? (Remonstratory whispers, expressive of opinion that the lecturer is becoming too personal.) I’m not looking at anybody in particular—­indeed I am not.  Nay, if you blush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking?  We’ll go back to the atoms.