Evening star., 1934-03-04

OF romance, hIBQC nave guessed AZ q
girl. But he would have guessed wrong.
Our young friend was contemplating
with the inner eye the wonders of a
new enchanted land upon whose bor-
ders he had abruptly and Unexpectedly
arrived. In a word, he was thinking
about heat.
Young Oliver Lodge, destined by his
father to carry on the family potters'
materials business, had been allowed to
leave his clerks stool and Winter in
London for two specific purposes. One
was to listen to a preacher for whom
Lodge senior had high respect; the
other was to give one of his aunts q
chance to encourage him in serious
reading. In London, however, someone
casually gave the youth ticket for a
course of lectures on Heat" at the
Museum Of Geology. The lecturer was
the famous Prof Tyndall.
It was an eye-opener to Oliver-his
f1rst introduction to physics. BY the
end of the first lecture he was lost (f
you take his fathers view, or won
0f you take Oliver's). His life there
after was to be devoted to science. So
keen was he that, as some of the lee
lures started very early in the morning
and the horse drawn transport of Eng
lands capital city was inadequate, he
went to bed in his clothes to make sure
Of arriving on time.
Such was the inauspiciouS beginning
Of the man destined to become Britain's
greatest scientist of the Edwardian era,
a world-famous pioneer in electricity
and magnetism tthe branch of physics
that fascinated him most), and, in his
later phase the most renowned con-
vert to the view that there is spiritual
world which interacts with the material
one, and that evidence of its existence
Is based on fact and not upon theory.
E1GHTY-THREE now, white-bearded,
sunken-eyed, bearing an odd re-
Demblance to Darwin in old age, but
still wonderfully active and alert and
receptive. Lodge looks back across his
crowded life to the time when the
modern world with all its marvels was
n the crucible and he was helping to
provide some of those raw materials
OF scientific speculation, discovery and
application out Of which the astounding
world Of today has been forged.
He was "a when he got his first job,
and, with It, release from the exigencies
Of the potters' materials manufacturing
business, to which Lodge senior made
him return every year from his inter-
mittent spells Of studying IN London.
IF you will, you WILL" said Lodge senior,
but you must pay your own way"
Oliver did, thanks to the university
college professor who offered him $3.50
. year as physics laboratory assistant.
There he was In London, living on S
week, buying his own bread and cheese
and cooked meat, taking it home In q
newspaper, keeping it tin It was all gone
no scraps. He lived in the northern
suburb Of Camden Town. Horse trans
ran into town, 8 miles away. But he
usually walked to save the fare.
He was still very poor, but had just
won his doctorate, when he fen In love.
He proposed In the street one evening
Is he walked back with his beloved
from chapel. Fanny Marshall did not
Immediately accept. Two blocks far
ther on Oliver, greatly daring, put his
arm around her and kissed her on the
cheek. It was the first kiss he had ever
bestowed. But still his beloved held
him of until a later day, when they
were walking home through the snow,
after supper at which there had been
ginger wine. Then she said yes" And
every wear afterwards until her death