"Can I trust your little fingers not to let things fall?" asked her father. "Remember, my funny glasses are precious. It might cost us a dinner if you should let one slip."
The professor soon found that his little daughter never let anything slip—either the things he used or the things he said. "Such a wise little fairy and such a busy one!" he would say. "I don't know how we could do our work without her."
If Professor Ladislaus Sklodowski had not loved his laboratory teaching above all else, he would have known that he was overworked. As it was, he counted himself fortunate in being able to serve Truth and to enlist others in her service. For the professor's zeal was of the kind that kindles enthusiasm. If you had seen the faces of those Polish students as they hung on his words and watched breathlessly the result of an experiment, you would have known that they, too, believed in the wonder-working fairies.
It seems as if the Polish people have a greater love and understanding of the unseen powers of the world than is given to many other nations. If you read the story of Poland's tragic struggles against foes within and without until, finally, the stronger surrounding countries—Germany, Austria, and Russia—divided her territory as spoil among themselves and she ceased to exist as a distinct nation, you will understand why her children have sought refuge in the things of the spirit. They have in a wonderful degree the courage that rises above the most unfriendly circumstances and says:
One day with life and heart
Is more than time enough to find a world.
Some of them, like Chopin and Paderewski, have found a new world in music; others have found it in poetry and romance; and still others in science. The child who dreamed of fairies in her father's classroom was to discover the greatest marvel of modern science—a discovery that opened up a new world to the masters of physics and chemistry of our day.
Marie's mother, who had herself been a teacher, died when the child was very small; and so it happened that the busy father had to take sole care of her and make the laboratory do duty as nursery and playroom. It was not strange that the bright, thoughtful little girl learned to love the things that were so dear to her father's heart. Would he not rather buy things for his work than have meat for dinner? Did he not wear the same shabby kaftan (the full Russian top-coat that looks like a dressing-gown) year after year in order that he might have material for important experiments? Truth was, indeed, more than meat and the love of learning more than raiment in that home, and the little daughter drank in his enthusiasm with the queer laboratory smells which were her native air and the breath of life to her.
The time came when the child had to leave this nursery to enter school, but always, when the day's session was over, she went directly to that other school where she listened fascinated to all her father taught about the wonders of the inner world of atoms and the mysterious forces that make the visible world in which we live. She still believed in fairies,—oh, yes!—but now she knew their names. There were the rainbow fairies—light-waves, that make all the colors we see,—and many more our eyes are not able to discover, but which we can capture by interesting experiments. There were sound-waves, too, and the marvelous forces we call electricity, magnetism, and gravitation. When she was nine years old, it was second nature to care for her father's batteries, beakers, and retorts, and to help prepare the apparatus that was to be used in the demonstrations of the coming day. The students marveled at the child's skill and knowledge, and called her with admiring affection "professorowna," (daughter-professor).
There was a world besides the wonderland of the laboratory, of which Marie was soon aware. This was the world of fear, where the powers of Russia ruled. In 1861 the Poles had made a vain attempt to win their independence, and when Marie was a little girl (she was born in 1867), the authorities tried to stamp out any further sparks of possible rebellion by adopting unusually harsh measures. It was a crime to speak the Polish language in the schools and to talk of the old, happy days when Poland was a nation. If any one was even suspected of looking forward to a better time when the people would not be persecuted by the police or forced to bribe unprincipled officials for a chance to conduct their business without interference, he was carried off to the cruel, yellow-walled prison near the citadel, and perhaps sent to a life of exile in Siberia. Since knowledge means independent thought and capacity for leadership, the high schools and universities were particularly under suspicion. Years afterward, when Marie spoke of this reign of terror, her eyes flashed and her lips were set in a thin white line. Time did not make the memory less vivid.