The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1891-10-24

old gold ribbon, a cat iingling a silver bell at
her blue neck, tray with glasses on it and a
bottle that was neither lime water nor apol-
iinaris, nor yet ginger beer, and moving
about here and there glorious woman with
night black hair piled on the top of her beau
tiful head, with bare neck and arms, daintily
Sippered feet and a laugh that seemed to stir
ihe few remaining bristles on the professors
load as he listened, SO sweet and seductive
I was. She wore black and white gown,
nd once she reached out her long fair arm
after red roses crammed in a blue bowl She
gathered up a handful of the flowers and
fastened them on her breast turning her
head as she did, so that the unregarded
locker on had a most delicious profile Of
throat, chin and oval check As the roses
iluttered on their new, sweet shrine, the pro-
fessor reached Out his hand, letting fall, I'M
knowingly, a new work on bacteria, that he
ought to have been reading, but was not.
his fingers touched the rich blossom of a
rose upon the balcony railing; the petals felt
soft and cool to his nervous acute touch: the
perfume came up to his nostrils like the
sweet breath of a child or woman, and then
his hand closed over the flower, tearing it
from the stem and bruising it beyond repair.
Down in the street all was gay and cheer
full. Women stood in their shop doors chat
tering; open carriages rolled by; somebody
III the piano shop was playing the quartet
from "RigolettO, and between the ialousies
OF near house the professor could see q
party OF men and women playing cards at a
round table. A man who believes in bacteria
will go to any length, and there is no doubt
the professor, cycling them pitifully, thought
their frivolity the sign of unmistakable
bacteria which he hoped to locate and dis
cover some day. But tonight the professor
was less disposed than usual to be critical or
severe, and he leaned over the railing looking
at life from a new point of view with such
an Enthusiastically healthy and human Gu
riosity as would have delighted his DOCTOR
A crowd of opera singers came out of the
restaurant at the corner, and as the lat
ticed doors swung like pendulums, he
had winks of views of a sanded floor, round
tables, walters i'll white linen jackets, little
hillocks of golden bread piled on the counter,
little green forests of chicory, tumblers of
red wine. The opera singers were talking
away and singing airily scraps of Rossini
and GounOd and Verdi as if there was moth
ing in the world so common as grand opera.
The women were fat and reminded him of
the rue de la Paix and the boulevard DIES
ltaliens, and the men had beautiful threats
rising above their low cut collars. And then
he looked over the way again. She was at
the piano singing, with her beautiful head
on one side like a birds.
Monsieur Microbee, Monsieurl Your new
milk will be hold if you do not soon drink it
up called laughing Nanette from the bal
cony above the entresol and pelted him with
a rose.
Professor Microbe smiled. Not the way he
smiled when he evolved a new theory or
when he read his scientific papers, or even as
he smiled in the stiffiy starched bosom of his
own family, but genuine smile that said,
Il don't care, Nanette, and he caught the
rose and fastened it in his buttonhole
The beautiful woman was going to the
opera. A carriage was at the door, and she
stood before the mirror pulling out the rich
puffs OF her night black hair and fastening
red rose behind her ear Her lovely
arms were uplifted, and song and a laugh
came from her red mouth Some one
wrapped cloak about her, gave her her fan,
glasses, gloves and flowers, and then she was
gone
Is it necessary to explain that Professor
Aicrohe followed her to the opera, nearly
paralyZing Nanette when she met him in the
corridor dressed in faultless evening attire
and looking 50 distinguished and every inch
professors
He looked about the grand old building,
crowded With women and here and there the
black oasis of a man, and he recognized with
amazement and relief the familiar faces and
bald heads and peculiar bumps of quite
number of learned professors and distin-
guished NJ. DIS. These sat listening to the
music Of "Willam Tell,n gruntmg content
eddy over the sweetest passages and at the
difficult bars, saying broadly and loudly,
"Bravol bravo!' as if grand opera and not
bacteria, music and not metaphysics, was
the very best thing in life.
Under the mummy cloths in which the
professor had persistently wrapped his soul,
he was a good deal like other men. There
wasn't anything he wouldn't do, nothing he
wouldn't enjoy, if only he was kept in public
countenance by those OF his own kind, and
the sight of those familiar bumps-for
no man in the world who knew of such
things could fail to recognize the bumps Of
our learned men, once he had seen 'em-did
more to revolutionize the professor than gall
Ions of pepsine or whatever might be the
/ stuff dyspeptics are made Of He at once
4 and forever flung his theory about midnight
/ suppers to the deuce, as his doctor had or
/ dered, when he heard her say to some favored
mortals: Come home to supper with us
after the opera.n
And that night after the opera he followed
her home, and went again to his balcony to
gaze into that free, jolly, joyous dining
room, where no blinds were pulled down and
where people sat about eating chicken salad
with oil in it and boned turkey and cold
breasts of pheasants with dry champagne.
He went into his room finally, and, heating
up little tin of water over the gas, took his
nightcap-a cup of boiling water. What
would Mrs. Microbe say to yon scene of rev.
| airy and cold turkey to the piano froIlino