But my purpose is merely to help you to estimate her effect on us, who used to gather from the four quarters of London at the midnight hour for the sense of being near her; and, more generally, to estimate the effect of many women like Eileen, set in a position of publicity, upon the community at large. To gather for a social glass in such an atmosphere is to justify the best that poetry has claimed for the fruit of the vine. As Browning's Andrea del Sarto stated,—"So such things should be."
THE STORY OF A MICROBOPHOBIAC
There was once upon a time a man who underwent a severe and prolonged attack of Microbophobia. You may not find the term in the dictionaries, nor in the medical lexicons; but, as it is quite possible that there are a variety of things in heaven and earth not yet dreamt of in the lexicons, there is really no justification for denying the existence of microbophobia on that ground. And as to the name itself, there is hydrophobia, and photophobia, and Anglophobia—so why not microbophobia?
Microbophobia is a disease of advanced civilization, of recent origin, and infectious. Its victims are to be found among the married rather than the unmarried, in the city rather than in the country, and among the cultured rather than the uncultured. In a word, the disease rages most in college and university communities, but is also pronounced in high school, grade school, and kindergarten spheres of influence. As all these, however, are in close connection with colleges and universities, microbophobia may be said to belong to institutions of higher learning.
Microbophobia rarely succeeds in engrafting itself onto healthy organisms. No one in perfectly sound mental, physical, and spiritual health need fear its attacks. Its host is almost always in a state of depletion at the time of colonization, and the point of attack invariably the sensus communis, an organ situated in that part of the anatomy usually known as the cranial cavity.
Its symptoms—
But the history of the case shall tell you of the symptoms.
The subject was a professor. It seems that he had laid the foundations of the disease in his college days by exposing himself to bacillus scientificus, and contracting a case of methoditis scientifica, again an ailment whose attack is directed at the sensus communis, and whose ravages are greatest among the learned, especially those whose work necessitates intimate contact with symbols, chemicals, ancient manuscripts, and other odorous and dusty material. Its victims usually betray their condition by rushing about insisting that any and all the business of life is susceptible of the same orderly disposition as the material of their laboratories.