She consented with rather better grace from the fact that Mr.
Pradamite--such was the lecturer's euphonious name--undertook to prove
conclusively that man was _not_ descended from the gorilla; but when
the little old gentleman walked briskly upon the stage, she whispered
John that he would have been a valuable advocate of the theory held
by the other side: he wanted nothing but a little pointed felt hat,
with a feather in it, to look very much like a small edition of
the original gorilla reduced to earning his living by assisting a
hand-organist.
The lecture, to John, was delightful--so clear, so logical, went so
far back, and so deep down, and so high up. "Walked all around that
fellow I heard last week on the other side," John said. But Marjory,
who had herself taken a long walk that afternoon, thought the whole
thing unutterably stupid: her eyelids would drop, her neck felt
double-jointed and would not stay erect. Fortunately, their seats
were far back, not very brilliantly lighted, and Marjory's had the
advantage of being next a pillar. John, however, considered this fact
unfortunate, for he could not obtain a good view of the remarkable
figures with which the old gentleman was illustrating his lecture,
talking in spasmodic jerks as he drew, and when John saw a dear and
scientific friend on a front seat, with a vacant place beside him, he
could not resist the temptation to take it.
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