Chapter the Third

The Very Small



So the day began. For the next hour Brother Gregory went around the room, choosing a boy by arithmetic calculation based on his current position and standing on the class roster. Each boy was then asked to perform a feat of mental numeracy. The correctness of his answer was immediately challenged by Mendel, who turned to another boy near him and said, "Correct?"
If the second boy said, "No", then he had to give the right answer, but if the second boy said, "Yes", and the answer was wrong, he had to take two turns before being allowed to sit down again.

Once he was satisfied that every boy had been sufficiently tested, he had two boys pass out books and paper, and spent the rest of that first lesson having his class read and copy out a section from the science primer. Today Mendel would teach this class of boys for two hours, but the average lesson was normally shorter than that. As the copying progressed, Brother Gregory walked around the room looking at the penmanship and making quiet comments on the number of ink blots that disgraced the pages. Every line of writing was supposed to be blotted before proceeding to the next line, but some of the boys had tried to avoid this chore.

"Now," said Mendel, clapping his hands and rubbing them together, "close your books and put down your pens - wipe the nib first Master Krizenecky".
A subtle change in the tone of his voice alerted the class, and they looked up expectantly. Brother Gregory was one of their favorite teachers. He was unfailingly friendly towards his classes in a way that many of the stricter disciplinarians were not, and, while keeping firm control over their behavior, he allowed a certain lightness that made his lessons very popular. Strict rules, enforced by the Headmaster, required that rote drill and practice lessons in mathematics and penmanship be given to every student, every day. But, while keeping to the rule, Mendel usually found a way of making these periods go quickly. Once finished, however, his style changed.
"Today we will be looking at the very small, and the very large," he grinned. "Master Cejc, what is the smallest thing you can see?"

After thinking for a moment, Master Cejc replied, "A dust speck floating in the air on a sunny day."
"A good answer," Mendel told him, "do you think, therefore, that a dust speck is the smallest thing there is? Could there be anything smaller?"
At once several hands went up in the class. A few boys had learnt this trick; if they put up their hands immediately (whether they knew the answer or not) Mendel would rarely call on them. Today the trick worked fine.
"Master Liznar, what to you think?"
Coming to his feet slowly, Master Liznar, who was towards the bottom of Mendel's performance roster, never the less struggled with an answer. "There could be something smaller," he said tentatively, looking sideways at the class to gauge their reaction, "but how would we know?"
Mendel clapped his hands again, "A good answer!"
The boy looked instantly relieved.
"A good answer indeed," Brother Gregory went on, "how would we know if there is something smaller than we can see with our eyes?"
He pointed towards one of his 'sparrows', "Orel?"

"My father," the boy responded promptly, "has a glass that makes things bigger when you look through it. He got it from his Grandfather, who was once in Paris. Sometimes he lets me look at flowers using this glass and I see a yellow dust which I could not see just with my eyes. So I say that there are some things smaller than we can see."
"Wonderful," said Mendel, "your father's glass 'magnifies' or makes larger what you can see. Not only are small objects made bigger, but tiny, invisible objects are made visible. In this way we can 'see' things that we could not see before."