Opening of the book
THE STOLEN BACILLUS AND
OTHER INCIDENTS
By H.G. Wells
Methuen & Co.
36 Essex Street, Strand, London
1895
TO
H.B. MARRIOTT WATSON
Most of the stories in this collection appeared originally in the Pall
Mall Budget, two were published in the Pall Mall Gazette, and one in St
James’s Gazette. I desire to make the usual acknowledgments. The third story in the book was, I find, reprinted by the Observatory, and the “Lord of the Dynamos” by the Melbourne Leader.
H.G. WELLS.
CONTENTS
THE STOLEN BACILLUS
“This again,” said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, “is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of cholera— the cholera germ.”
The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye. “I see very little,” he said.
“Touch this screw,” said the Bacteriologist; “perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the fraction of a turn this way or that.”
“Ah! now I see,” said the visitor. “Not so very much to see after all.
Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those little particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! Wonderful!”
He stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it in his hand towards the window. “Scarcely visible,” he said, scrutinising the preparation. He hesitated. “Are these—alive? Are they dangerous now?”
“Those have been stained and killed,” said the Bacteriologist. “I wish, for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them in the universe.”
“I suppose,” the pale man said with a slight smile, “that you scarcely care to have such things about you in the living—in the active state?”
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