In Which Mr Quill Relieves Me of a Considerable Burden

I recognised the yellow carriage outside the North Kelsham telegraph office by a repair to its rear wheel, and was immediately annoyed that my memory should preserve so faithfully an object of such little scholarly value. On this occasion, 8 June 1867, Mr Septimus Quill had erected beside it a copper apparatus resembling a diving helmet which had married injudiciously into the brewing trade. A padded chair stood beneath two branching pipes. Above these, a glass receiver bore the inscription WORRY, EXTRACTED WHILE YOU WAIT. Quill himself wore a purple apron and was explaining to a railway clerk that prolonged responsibility deposited a sediment behind the breastbone. I put down my travelling case. There are occasions when one must accept that one will miss one’s train.

“Show me the sediment,” I said. Quill greeted me with an affection which, had it been genuine, would have required several years of intimate friendship to justify. He told the clerk that I held the Royal Chair of Comparative Physiology and Natural History, and would therefore appreciate the difficulty of extracting anything from a seated position. His customer laughed; I examined the chair. A mouthpiece led through a coil surrounded by crushed ice into the receiver. The clerk was instructed to breathe out gently through the tube, resting between breaths while Quill counted at an agreeable pace. After several minutes a few drops appeared. Quill held them towards the light with the professional gravity of a jeweller discovering an inclusion. “Mostly correspondence,” he pronounced. “Some domestic apprehension. You have been carrying this since Tuesday.”

The clerk admitted that Tuesday had been difficult. I asked whether Wednesday had offered complete tranquillity, and he said it had been worse. Quill inclined his head as though I had furnished a valuable confirmation. His fee was sixpence, with twopence extra for sealing the extracted worry in a bottle against reabsorption. I explained that expired breath contains water, which a sufficiently cold surface will condense; the apparatus offered no evidence that anxiety had accompanied it. Quill listened attentively, then told the gathering crowd that he welcomed agreement upon the physical reality of the extraction. He possesses an intelligence which would distinguish a university department, provided the department kept its accounts elsewhere. I insisted upon a trial using air passed through warm water by a pair of bellows, but he offered me the chair instead. Regrettably, I considered a demonstration upon my own person more decisive.

My first mistake was to permit him to fasten the auxiliary apparatus. This consisted of two tin wings attached to my shoulders, each carrying a little flag marked BEFORE. They had no connexion with the breathing tube. Quill said they registered habitual oppression, and adjusted them until they drooped. I demanded their removal; he replied that an incomplete trial would leave us both open to criticism. A Gremlin porter, who had stopped with a barrow of parcels, observed that I had asked for the full procedure. I sat down. Quill counted my breaths, advised me to loosen my hands, and asked what had lately troubled me. I mentioned a paper on Elven dentition whose author had measured plaster casts without correcting for shrinkage. By the time I had explained the consequences, the receiver contained a respectable quantity of water. Quill raised the tin wings with a cord behind the chair. Both flags now read AFTER. The porter applauded with his feet.

I felt somewhat easier. I record this because the sensation was real, and because suppressing it would place me in the company of the gentleman with the plaster casts. I had been sitting comfortably after a hurried walk, breathing at leisure and enjoying an uninterrupted opportunity to explain another scholar’s error. Any of these circumstances deserved investigation; none established the removal of a deposit from my chest. Quill proposed bottling the result as Academic Misgiving, a particularly corrosive variety. I secured the receiver before he could add a label, and paid the porter to fetch warm water from the station kitchen. With his assistance I passed damp air from the bellows through the chilled coil. Water collected promptly. Quill examined it. “Industrial worry,” he said. “These bellows have plainly been overworked.” I asked whether any possible result could persuade him that his theory was mistaken. He considered this with an appearance of scrupulous care, then said that defective bellows would naturally require a different interpretation.

Our dispute became useful when the clerk returned with a fellow employee who complained of recurrent pain beneath the breastbone. Quill had already reached for the mouthpiece when I caught his wrist. “You invented a sediment in precisely that situation,” I said quietly. “He has supplied you with a pain. Be careful what you allow him to conclude.” Quill looked at the man, asked a brief question, and laid the tube down. He returned the clerk’s sixpence to pay for a cab to the infirmary, explaining that the condenser was unsuitable for painful complaints. I would have preferred a fuller confession, but accepted the immediate improvement. Before I left, I also required him to remove the promise against reabsorption. He objected that the bottles were excellent bottles. I agreed that their virtues could be advertised separately.

I missed my train by eleven minutes. During the resulting wait I watched Quill alter his board to read A QUIET QUARTER-HOUR, WITH VISIBLE RESULTS. The chair remained occupied almost continuously. He had discovered a genuine demand for somewhere to sit while an intelligent person attended to one’s grievances, and I told him that he might earn an honest living from it if he could endure the simplicity. He assured me that simplicity was his governing principle, then asked permission to advertise that the apparatus had relieved the Royal Chair of a measurable burden. I refused. He sighed, uncorked my bottle and poured its contents back into the ice bucket, explaining to the porter that scholarly worry must consequently remain in circulation.