If anything of this kind happens to a Professor lecturing on some scientific subject, it is no laughing matter, especially to a gentleman lecturing at a meeting of the British Association. At one of these gatherings a well-known Professor was giving a most interesting and appreciated address, illustrated by the limelight, on the subject of "Quartz Fibres." If I remember rightly, he was explaining to the audience that the strands of a spider's web were purposely rough so that the spider could climb them easily, but that a quartz fibre was smooth and glassy, and a spider would never attempt to ascend one. He showed on the sheet a single thread of a spider's web and a single quartz fibre, and amid the breathless excitement of the audience a real live spider was put into the lantern. The applause with which it was greeted must have made the poor thing nervous, I suppose, or else it may have had an attack of stage fright; anyhow, it curled itself up in a corner and refused to budge. A sharpened pencil, which magnified on the screen looked like a battering-ram, was brought into play, and the unfortunate creature had to rouse itself. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you will notice that it is quite impossible for the spider to ascend the quartz fibre—it may try, but it is bound to fail—but see how it will rush to the strand from its familiar web!" The spider received an extra dig with the pencil, and then with astonishing alacrity ran to the quartz fibre, up which it climbed with the greatest ease amid the roars of the delighted audience. The fact was that the Professor had omitted to explain that his argument only applied to female spiders. These have a pernicious habit of running after their spouses and belabouring them, so the poor hubby is provided by Nature with a hirsute growth on his legs which enables him to escape by climbing, and nothing would delight him more than for his wife to give chase to him if there was a quartz fibre anywhere near.
Sometimes there is no gallery in which to place the lantern, and then the pictures have to be shown from the floor of the hall, when it seems to be the delight of everyone coming in late to walk up the centre in the full light of the powerful rays of the lantern, presumably for the pleasure of beholding their image projected in silhouette on to the screen. Those awful feminine hats ought to be abolished, and all late comers ought to be made to find their seats on their hands and knees, as they run the risk of upsetting the thread of the lecturer's discourse, and the gravity of the audience as well, I remember once when I was giving my lecture on "Portraiture: Past and Present," and illustrating the portraits on medals, I came to some near the bottom of the screen. "Here," said I, "we have the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress of London, 1300 A.D." At that moment the Mayor and Mayoress of the town, who, for effect I suppose, had come in a quarter of an hour late to the seats reserved for them in the centre of the hall, walked past the rays of the lantern, and were of course projected on to the screen, unconsciously burlesquing my picture, and causing an effect they had not anticipated.
LATE ARRIVALS.
I referred just now to mishaps that will occur with the best-regulated lanterns. The gas, for instance, may become prematurely exhausted, which necessitates a stoppage while the cylinders are being changed, and when Rudyard Kipling's work, "The Light that Failed," was published, I immediately sent for a copy, thinking that probably the author had tried entertaining with the aid of the limelight in India and had had some experience of this kind. I could give that clever author plenty of material for another volume on "The Light that Failed"—a collection of anecdotes connected with the magic lantern. But, as I said, it doesn't so much matter to the entertainer as the lecturer, who must be au sérieux, and when I was a lecturer I felt any mishap of the kind very keenly; but an entertainer is a privileged being, and can turn the matter off with a joke at the expense of his manager, his gas-man, his audience, or his subject. No less a personage than Sir William Harcourt happened to be on the screen when my gas went out one evening in Scotland. I had to retire from the platform while new cylinders of gas were being adjusted, and when I made my reappearance I assured my audience that it was probably the first occasion on which Sir William had been put out for want of gas!
I recollect, though, once at Bradford, where I was lecturing, the audience were put out for want of it, for the operators supplied by the association I was lecturing to were utterly incompetent. The gas was bad, to begin with—it became small by degrees and beautifully less, and suddenly went out altogether! So did the operators. They simply bolted out of the hall, and left the lantern to manage itself.
CHAIRMEN.
Du Maurier made a delightful drawing for Punch of a sandwich advertising contractor dismissing a man with a board on which was the letter H. "Now, look 'ere, you H! The public don't want yer, nor I don't, nor nobody don't—so 'ook it!" Or something to that effect.
RESERVED SEATS.