"Yes," he said, with the most unruffled composure,
" I have submitted."

His conduct, under the circumstances, was
so utterly inconceivable, that I stood bewildered
with my hand in his. It is a piece of
rudeness to stare at anybody, and it is an act
of indelicacy to stare at a gentleman. I committed
both those improprieties. And I said,
as if in a dream, " What does it mean?"

"Permit me to tell you," he replied. " And
suppose we sit down?"

He led me to a chair. I have an indistinct
remembrance that he was very affectionate. I
don't think he put his arm round my waist to
support me—but I am not sure. I was quite
helpless, and his ways with ladies were very
endearing. At any rate, we sat down. I can
answer for that, if I can answer for nothing
more.

OUR INNER SELVES.

THE Chinese sword-swallowers at the Paris
Exhibition were extraordinary performers in
their way, but at this epoch of progress they
have soon been distanced. Swallowing a sabre,
at present, is nothing. The fashion now is to
swallow a lighted lantern and brilliantly illuminate
your inner man. You then become a
living and walking gas-light; that is all.

It is evident that swallowing a lantern is only
one remove in advance of swallowing a sword.
Now there happen to be little electric lanterns
which give light without burning. They are
called Gessler's tubes, and are small glass cylinders,
either empty or filled with azote, hydrogen,
or carbonic acid gas, through which a voltaic
current is made to pass. The tubes become
sufficiently luminous to allow you to read printed
letters held at several inches distance from them.
When this miniature lantern is introduced into
a stomach, the skin is transparent enough to
permit your seeing the interior of the animal.
There is no need for people to live in glass
houses, for they are hereby transformed into
glass houses themselves. Their domestic secrets
are rudely divulged; and Diogenes would be
delighted to find that, instead of a mere
superficial outside view of his much desiderated
honest man, he can now, with the newly-
invented lantern, look a person through and
through.

The experiment, which may be considered
exceedingly curious until something still more
strange is started, is only an extended copy of
what has been practised in medical art for some
years past. For instance, there is the
Ophthalmoscope, or Eye-inspector, of the German
philosopher Helmholtz, a small instrument by
means of which, the interior of the eye being
lighted up, it is possible to explore successfully
the deepest portions of that intricate organ.
Other instruments assist in the examination of
divers internal parts of the human body. Not
the least remarkable of these inquisitive apparatuses
is the Laryngoscope, invented by a German
physician named Czermak for the inspection
of the respiratory passages and the
mechanism which produces the voice.

The vocal organ in man (which Dr. Tyndall
truly describes as the most perfect of reed
instruments) is placed at the top of the windpipe,
the head of which is adjusted for the attachment
of certain elastic bands, called " vocal chords,"
which almost close the aperture. When the
air from the lungs is forced through the slit
which separates these vocal chords, they are
thrown into vibration. By varying their
tension, the rate of vibration is varied, and the
sound changed in pitch. The sweetness and
smoothness of the voice depend on the perfect
closure of the slit of the glottis at regular
intervals during the vibration.

The vocal chords may be illuminated and
viewed in a mirror placed suitably at the back
of the mouth. Dr. Tyndall once attempted to
project M. Czermak's larynx upon a screen in
his lecture-room, but with only partial success.
The organ may, however, be viewed directly in
the Laryngoscope, its motions, both in singing,
speaking, and coughing, being strikingly visible.
The roughness of the voice in colds is due,
according to the aforesaid Helmholtz (learned
in Acoustics), to mucous flocculi, which get into
the slit of the glottis, and which are seen by
means of the Laryngoscope. The squeaking
falsetto voice with which some persons are
afflicted, the same Helmholtz thinks may be
produced by the drawing aside of the mucous
layer which ordinarily lies under and loads the
vocal chords. Their edges thus become sharper,
and their weight less; while their elasticity
remaining the same, they are shaken into more
rapid tremors. The promptness and accuracy
with which the vocal chords can change their
tension, their form, and the width of the slit
between them, render the voice the most perfect
of musical instruments.

The order of the day, therefore, is that we
should be able to see everything, without exception.
If we can look an animalcule through
and through by means of transmitted light; if,
in the same way, we can behold the blood
circulating in the tail of a tadpole or the foot of
a frog, with all the minute vessels thereto
pertaining, why should we not do so with larger
animals, with our own proper selves? It is
merely a question of degree. With a sufficient
intensity of illuminating power, there is no
knowing what may not become transparent.
And, in fact, a distinguished hygienist, M.
Foussagrives, of Montpellier, attempted to
render the internal viscera of our body visible
by transmitted light. They were to be exhibited
to bystanders as animated and most
interesting transparencies. M. Brük, a German
medical man, followed up the same line of
research. Finally, at the Medical Congress of
1867, M. Milliot, a French physician residing
at Kiew, gave an approximate solution of the
problem.

His Splanchnoscope (or instrument intended
to render the viscera externally visible) has