"She spoke with a strong Scotch accent, and was slightly affected with
deafness, an infirmity so common in England and Scotland.
"While Mrs. Somerville talked, the old gentleman, seated by the fire,
busied himself in toasting a slice of bread on a fork, which he kept at
a slow-toasting distance from the coals. An English lady was present,
learned in art, who, with a volubility worthy of an American, rushed
into every little opening of Mrs. Somerville's more measured sentences
with her remarks upon recent discoveries in _her_ specialty. Whenever
this occurred, the old man grew fidgety, moved the slice of bread
backwards and forwards as if the fire were at fault, and when, at
length, the English lady had fairly conquered the ground, and was
started on a long sentence, he could bear the eclipse of his idol no
longer, but, coming to the sofa where we sat, he testily said, 'Mrs.
Somerville would rather talk on science than on art.'
"Mrs. Somerville's conversation was marked by great simplicity; it was
rather of the familiar and chatty order, with no tendency to the essay
style. She touched upon the recent discoveries in chemistry or the
discovery of gold in California, of the nebulae, more and more of which
she thought might be resolved, and yet that there might exist nebulous
matters, such as compose the tails of comets, of the satellites, of the
planets, the last of which she thought had other uses than as
subordinates.
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