Ernest smiled. "I suppose I've been reading papers and reports from the Smithsonian for ten years, but until I met you, Mr. Austin, I was certainly vague about who or what the work represented. Go ahead and give Moore the explanation you gave me, will you?"
"Well," began Austin, "an Englishman named Smithson left his estate to his nephew named Hungerford with the stipulation that if Hungerford died without heirs, the state was to go to found the Smithsonian Institution in America. Hungerford obligingly died without issue. It was in 1835, I think, and after a great deal of red tape, about half a million dollars was turned over to the American Congress to go to work with.
"Of course, Congress did considerable false stepping but finally the Institution was organized with the avowed purpose of increasing and diffusing knowledge. Rather a large program, eh! It was proposed to carry this program out by stimulating talented men to make original researches by offering prizes, by appropriating every year a sum of money for particular researches and by every year publishing reports on the progress of difficult branches of knowledge.
"The original bequest has been increased until now the Institution has use of the income on a million dollars. You'll be surprised to know how much real work has been done by this very little advertised branch of our government. For example, out of the system of weather observation developed by the Institution grew the United States Weather Bureau. The United States Ethnological Research is all done by us—as witness the monumental studies of our American Indians. Powell's great explorations were fathered by the Smithsonian and so were Langley's experiments in flying machines as well as his studies of solar heat."
"My word!" exclaimed Roger, "so they were!"
"When I was in the northern part of the state, last summer, studying certain Indian mounds, I ran across one of your fellow instructors who mentioned your work in heat engineering. I've always been much interested in that line of research, so when I came West again I tried to get in touch with you."
"I'm not hard to reach, surely," said Roger.
"Oh, yes, you are," returned Austin.
"It was this way, Rog," Ernest's lazy, gentle voice interrupted. "I kept Dr. Austin away from you until I felt that there was some hope. I didn't want you to have another disappointment."
"As I got your idea from Mr. Wolf, it seems to me that the Smithsonian might be glad to back you in further experiments," said Austin.