THE PROFESSOR'S PREDICAMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 111, 12 May 1934, Page 19

THE PROFESSOR'S PREDICAMENT

Probably tho last article which tho j late Mr. Arthur Weigall, tho famous ° Egyptologist, -wrote was ono in which, * for "John b' .London's Weekly," ho re- {• counted humorous incidents connected I with explorations ■in Egypt and ex- 1 plorers. Ono story is highly amusing. 5 A professor was lecturing in Sweden, s While waiting for a ..train to take him c from a small university town to the t capital, ho sat on a grassy mound be- i hind the station; and when he at^last c boarded the train hefo.und that" his c trousers were : covered by very active 1 and excited ants. It was evident that 1 he had been sitting on one of their 1 nests. Alone in the compartment, he ( hastily took off his trousers and shook 1 them out of the window. As ho did so f another train sped in the opposite direc- 1 tion, and away flow tho trousers, 1 hooked to the door-handle of a passing < carriage. The professor's plight was 1 . terriblo. IVom the waist up he was ' la perfectly proper professorj from that ]

L-iumi, uuwmvarus nc was a, comedian out o£ an improper French farce. At tho next station air elderly lady stepped into the eonipartment, and plunged back on to the platform with a scream. Presently a railway official arrived and locked him in. The man then telegraphed along the line, for at the next stop there entered the compartment a doctor and two policemen, carrying a rug in which they wrapped the professor, . thereafter obliging him to accompany '■hem to' the police station. He could riot speak a word'of Swedish, and when he had frenziedly acted in pantomime all that, had happened to him, making appropriate grunts and exclamations to illustrate the successive phases of his misadventure, giving spectacular imitations of distracted ants biting him in their terror and of trousers sailing through the air, tho doctor became very grave, and at once had him taken to the local asylum. It was Hot until tho next morning that ho obtained his release.