human
Mph!--most persons spend half an hour and give it up. Well, it was given me--worthless keepsake, he said--by Sir Thomas Sydenham, when as a young man stuffed with mine own importance I called upon him at London. He was most kind. Corrected my quantities, I recall, when I ventured a Latin tag in what he tolerantly called my vile colonial accent. He died, I believe, in the year of the revolution, 1689--so you see, Reuben, time and change, and we grow old somehow. Reuben thought: But he is not speaking to himself in the far-off way of the old; he is speaking to _me_, and for _my_ sake....
gpt
Perhaps you never heard of Sir Thomas?
human
No, sir, I never did.
gpt
He hath been called the English Hippocrates--an exaggeration, but a great man certainly, I think the greatest in medicine since Harvey.
human
Harvey?
gpt
There are gaps in your learning after all. I'll be happy to tell you about Harvey if you like. About Signor Malpighi too, who as it happens discovered the presence of the capillaries by dissecting the lung of a frog. Not one of your frogs of course. Some Swiss or Italian frog, unknown benefactor of science.
human
Did you think, sir, I was all vain because I like to make comical noises with big words?
gpt
No, sir. On reflection--no; I did not think that.
human
I've been called--oh, flippant or the like, because it seems I do now and then laugh at the wrong time.
gpt
Who calls you that?
human
Oh!... My tutor for one, but meaneth no harm by it. Actually he's very kind, and I suppose I try him badly, but then by chance I'll pronounce some Latin quantity correctly or come unscathed through the horrid jungle of some Greek verb, and he forgiveth all.
gpt
M. Cory, I have been sitting here fearing that perhaps _I_ had laughed at the wrong times, and that you might regard me as--mm-yas, flippant or the like.
human
I do not.
gpt
In that view of the case, perhaps you and I ought to be friends.
human
As a matter of fact, said Reuben,
gpt
I thought we already were.