I rushed at the former.
“Can you put in an electric fuse?” I asked.
“Certainly,” was the reply.
“For Heaven’s sake, go down to the kitchen,” I continued. “There is a hopeless boy there who evidently cannot manage it, and we are in comparative darkness.”
Down the steps the great chemist bounded, followed by the parlourmaid, and landed, much to the surprise of everybody, at the kitchen door. There seemed to be barely time for him to have reached the electric box, before the light sprang into being. Then he washed his hands and came to dinner, smiling.
What a contrast to the fumbling of the British workman was the dexterity of the scientific man.
Two evenings later, Sir Joseph Swan, the inventor of the incandescent burner, was dining at my house and I told him the story.
“I have no doubt Ramsay had often done it before,” he said; “for when electric light first came in I never seemed to go to any house that I wasn’t asked to attend to the light. In fact, I quite looked upon it as part of the evening’s entertainment to put things in order before the proceedings began. But I think you have inherited your father’s gift as a raconteur, and that is paying you a high compliment, for he was one of the best I ever knew. Only the other day I was retailing some of his stories about Ruskin.” And then he reminded me of the following:
Ruskin and my father were great friends, and several times the latter stayed at Brantwood. On his first visit he had been touring in the English Lakes, and having a delightful invitation from Ruskin, he gladly accepted; but there was no mention of my mother, and consequently, rather than suggest that she should join him, it was arranged that she and my small sister—then about eight—should go to the neighbouring hotel.