They were of the same age,
22; they hoped to get married when he was promoted to the rank of full
surgeon; they were destined to wait seven-and-a-half years before she
returned home to fulfil his early jesting prophecy of making her a
Frau Professorin. Here, again, was stern disciplining on the part
of destiny. For the first years they were able to meet during the
intervals between the long surveying cruises of the ship; they cheated
the months of separation by keeping journals for each other. But for
nearly five years they were parted by twelve thousand miles of sea,
and, worse, by slow sailing ships, when letters would take five months
or more to receive an answer, which by that time might be entirely at
cross purposes with the changed aspect of affairs. The possibilities
of estrangement were incalculable. Their lives were developing on
entirely different lines. He had been admitted to the inmost circle of
men of science as an intellectual peer; he was elected F.R.S. when
he was barely twenty-six, and received the Royal Medal the following
year, as well as being chosen to serve on the Council of the Society;
he wrote; he lectured at the Royal Institution. And yet, with all the
support of the leaders in science, he could not find any post wherein
to earn his bread and butter.
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