Professor Jane Bottomly was wished on us out of a pleasant April sky. She
fell like a meteoric mass of molten metal upon the Bronx Park Zooelogical
Society splashing her excoriating personality over everybody until
everybody writhed.
I had not yet seen the lady. I did not care to. Sooner or later I'd be
obliged to meet her but I was not impatient.
Now the Field Expeditionary Force of the Bronx Park Zooelogical Society
is, perhaps, the most important arm of the service. Professor Bottomly
had just been appointed official head of all field work. Why? Nobody
knew. It is true that she had written several combination nature and love
romances. In these popular volumes trees, flowers, butterflies, birds,
animals, dialect, sobs, and sun-bonnets were stirred up together into a
saccharine mess eagerly gulped down by a provincial reading public, which
immediately protruded its tongue for more.
The news of her impending arrival among us was an awful blow to everybody
at the Bronx. Professor Farrago fainted in the arms of his pretty
stenographer; Professor Cornelius Lezard of the Batrachian Department ran
around his desk all day long in narrowing circles and was discovered on
his stomach still feebly squirming like an expiring top; Dr.
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