A Winter Amid the Ice, and Other Thrilling Stories

sonage, known by the si

highly estimated throughout learned Europe, a happy rival of the Davys, the Daltons, the Bostocks, the Menzies, th

ugh with the good people of Quiquendone. He had an imperturbable confidence both in himself and in his doctrines. Always smiling, walking with head erect and shoulders thrown back in a free and unconstrained manner, with a steady gaze, large open nostrils, a vast mouth which inhaled the air in liberal dr

his expense? Probably, as he permitted himself to indulge in such extravag

by his assistant, who answered to the name of Gédéon Ygène; a tall,

ir town with the benefits of an unheard-of system of lighting? Did he not, under this pretext, design to make some great physiological experiment by operating _in anima vi

ly been established; the gasometers were ready for use, and the main pipes, running beneath the street pavements, would soon appear in the form of burners in the public edifices and the private house

lighting of the town was to be achieved, not by the combustion of common carburetted hydrogen, produced by distilling coal,

delicate machinery to produce the two gases separately. An electric current was sent through large basins full of water, and the liquid was decomposed into its two constituent parts, oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen passed off at one end; the hydrogen, of double the volume of its late associate, at the other. As a necessary precaution, they were collected in separate reservoirs, for their mixture would have produced a frightfu

l contrivance, gain a splendid lighting; but Doctor Ox and his as

rgomaster's parlour, Gédéon Ygène and Doctor Ox were talking in the laboratory which b

iquendonians. For animation they are midway between sponges and coral! You saw them disputing and irritating each other by voice and g

nd of his forefinger, "the experiment begins well, and if I had not p

natured in itself, but, in the mouth of a Quiquendonian, it is worth all the insults which the Homeric heroe

ed Ygène, in the tone of a man who est

it whether they think well or ill of u

not to be feared that, in producing such an excitement in their respiratory o

science. What would you say if the dogs or frogs refuse

e interests

d offer some objection; but Doctor Ox imagined that he had stated a

quite convinced. "We could not have hit upon better subje

d the doctor, slowly

t the pulse o

hund

e average pulsa

s don't scratch,--a town where the police-court has nothing to do from one year's end to another,--a town where people do not grow enthusiastic about anything, either about art or business,--a town where the gendarmes are a sort of myth, and in which an

husiastic assistant; "and have you an

e and twenty-one of oxygen, carbonic acid and steam in

. "The experiment will be made on a

ded Doctor Ox triumphantly,