FICTION
207
The unfortunate case in northwestern Massachusetts soon
came to the attention of Dr. Fuerst and his fellow scientists, at the
Foundation's headquarters in Cambridge : for these devoted
gentlemen were, at that time, about to embark upon an
experimental program of vast scope and ambition, springing out of
Professor George Manley Beard's masterly
Degeneracy, Race, and
Destiny,
of 1891. (I had every intention of perusing Lord Beard's
famous study, which ran, I believe, into some five or six volumes,
and presented quite a challenge, in its era, to the Socialists,
Communists, and others of that "free-thinking" tribe, who sought
to teach that
material environment,
and not
inherited characteristics,
determined mankind: yet this tome is now very hard to come by, and
is not to be found, on either the open shelves, of the great Firestone
Library at Princeton, or even in its hushed and regal Special
Collections wing. The confus'd morass of elderly books, housed in
Quatre Face,
-this residence being, I should explain again, the
ancestral home of the van Dijcks, many miles west of Princeton-is
altogether innocent of Lord Beard's volumes; and if they are to be
found at
Crosswicks Manse,
in Dr. Slade's old and cherished
leatherbound library, they are, in any case, no longer acces–
sible,-the property of the New Jersey Historical Society now, and
zealously protected, by that vigilant institution.)
Dr. Fuerst and his teammates had not any particular interest,
in precisely how the Jellyby rabies had been communicated: the
testimony of the dead boy's family, as to the probability of his having
been infected, by a bite from a "drooling" barn cat, some three
weeks previous, satisfied their curiosity. (They were, of course,
greatly interested, to learn of any subsequent cases of rabies, in the
vicinity: but, alas, none were reported.) Then, by one of those
serendipitous events, that so frequently appear, in the annals of
science and medicine, it happened that a young black boy, of twelve
years of age, succumbed to the self-same lethal disease: this, within
ninety days of the earlier case; yet, in a distant part of the
state,-that ill-favored suburb of Boston, Roxbury.
This unfortunate child had been bitten, by the calculation of
his elder brother,
some eight months previous;
and so withstood the
onslaught of the dread virus, that, even once the actual horror of the
rabid state
had commenced, he held out for near nine days,-until he
too lapsed into a coma , from which, alas, he never wakened. (He
had, it seems, been infected, by a superficial bite, from a "very
angry" stray dog, which had been subsequently shot to death,
