BLACKIE'S SYMPATHY.

Waipa Post, Volume VII, Issue 342, 21 August 1914, Page 7

BLACKIE'S SYMPATHY.

A delightful story is told of the grand old professor of whom Edinburgh is so proud. Professor Blackie was lecturing to a new class with whose personnel he was very imperfectly acquainted. In answer to some direction given by the lecturer, a -student rose to read a paragraph; his book in his left hand. "Sir!'' thundered Blackie, "hold your book in your right hand." And as the student would have spoken, "No words, sir! Your right hand, I say!" The student held up his right arm, ending piteously at the stump of his wrist.

"Sir, I hae nae richt hand," he said, and his voice was unsteady. Before Blackie could open his lips, there arose from the class such a terrific storm of hisses as one perhaps must go to Edinburgh to hear, and by it his voice was overborne as by a wild

Then the professor left his place and went down to the student he had unwittingly so hurt. He put his arm about the lad's shoulders and drew him close, and the lad leaned up against his breast and looked up at him as though Divinity itself had stooped in compassion.

"My boy," said Blackie—he spoke very softly, yet not so softly but that ever word was audible in the hush that had fallen on the classroom—"my boy, you'll forgive me that I was over rough ? I did not know—l did not know."

He turned to his students, and with a look and tone that came straight from his heart, he said: — "And let me say to you all, I am rejoiced to be shown I am teaching a class of gentlemen." Scottish lads can cheer as well, as hiss, and that Blackie learned abundantly, then and many a time thereafter.

NOTHING NEW

That there is nothing new under the sun receives fresh proof every day from the work of scientists.

Mr. W. H. Cadman has recently discovered that the Egyptians incubated chickens to the number of one hundred and twenty millions a year. He has, further, found out how they did it. They had no oil-stoves or gas or elec-trically-heated incubators, but used ovens which worked much better, though they required a little more attending to. Each oven was made to hold sevea thousand eggs, and the fuel used was chopped straw, until the last ten days, when the hatching energy was supplied by the chickens themselves. One of the commonest errors of the men using our modern incubators is to employ far too much heat, especially towards the end of the period. It seems, therefore, that we may learn not only how to do things but, also how not to do them from the Egyptians of five thousand years ago.

The fact that they used straw shows that they were most careful to avoid intense heat at any stage in the proceedings.