Science and Religion: Edwin Salpeter,

Owen Gingerich and John

Polkinghorne: In conversation with
Mark Turin and Alan Macfarlane 1st
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 Edited by Radha Béteille
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Creative Lives and Works

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

EDWIN SALPETER, OWEN GINGERICH AND
JOHN POLKINGHORNE
Edited by
Radha Béteille

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh,
In conversation with
Pakistan or Bhutan) Mark Turin and Alan Macfarlane

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CREATIVE LIVES AND WORKS

Science and Religion

Science and Religion: Edwin Salpeter, Owen Gingerich and John Polkinghorne is the
frst time a collection of interviews is being published as a book. These interviews have
been conducted by one of England’s leading social anthropologists and historians,
Professor Alan Macfarlane.
Filmed over a period of 40 years, the fve conversations in this volume, are part
of Social Science Press’s series Creative Lives and Works. These transcriptions also
form a part of a larger set of interviews that cut across various disciplines, from the
social sciences, the sciences and to the performing and visual arts. The current volume
is on three foremost physicists and historians of science.
Edwin Salpeter recounts rather dispassionately his departure from Austria to
Australia to escape Nazi persecution. And in doing so broaches, not only, on the
prevailing anti-Semitic sentiment of the time, but takes the debate forward into
the one between science and religion. Though he only touches upon it, this debate
fnds resonance in the words of Owen Gingerich who belonged to the Mennonite
dispensation and who has been rather vocal about the pro-Christian anti-creationist
ideology. However, it is John Polkinghorne who provides a deep insight into the
ongoing debate on science and religion.
Immensely riveting as conversations, this collection reveals how intrinsically
related science and religion are, how pertinent it is to understand the workings of
science in the context of religion. The book will be of enormous value not just to
those interested in Astronomy and Cosmology as well as the History of Science, but
also to those with an inquisitive mind.

Mark Turin is a British anthropologist, linguist and radio broadcaster who specializes
in the Himalayas and the Pacifc Northwest. From 2014–18, he served as Chair of
the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program and Acting Co-Director of
the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver. He is Associate Professor of Anthropology and director of the Digital
Himalaya Project. Turin serves as founding editor of the World Oral Literature
Series with the Cambridge-based Open Book Publishers, which aims to preserve and
promote the oral literatures of Indigenous communities in innovative, responsive,
ethical and culturally-appropriate ways. Turin's work has been recognized by the
Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and the Killam Trust. https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Mark_Turin

Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon
School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities where he received two
Master's degrees and two doctorates. He is the author of over forty books, including
The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World
Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an
historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and
is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a
Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Professor Macfarlane received the Huxley
Memorial Medal, the highest honour of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2012.
CREATIVE LIVES AND WORKS

Science and Religion

Edwin Salpeter, Owen Gingerich
and John Polkinghorne

In conversation with
Mark Turin and Alan Macfarlane

Edited by
Radha Béteille
First published 2022
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Social Science Press
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been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal,
Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 9781032119731 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781003222446 (ebk)
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Contents

Preface vii
Transcriber’s Note ix
Introduction xi

PART I
Edwin Salpeter – In conversation with Mark Turin 3

PART II
Owen Gingerich – In conversation with Alan Macfarlane 25

PART III
John Polkinghorne – In conversation with Alan Macfarlane 65

Appendix 1: Biographical Information – Compiled 125

by Radha Béteille
Appendix 2: Scientifc Terms and Equipment – Compiled 157
by Radha Béteille
Preface

EDWIN SALPETER
‘I had the honour of being introduced to Ed (Edwin) Salpeter
at the very end of his life by his wife Antonia (Lhamo) Shouse
Salpeter, whom I had come to know through the Himalayan studies
community at Cornell University in which we were both active.
Albeit only in passing, I had mentioned to Antonia that I enjoyed
meeting senior scholars from across the disciplines and contributing
to this increasingly collaborative interview project to which Alan
Macfarlane had introduced me: documenting the creativity and
richness of academic lives. Antonia urged me to be swift, as Ed was
in the last stages of his battle with leukemia. On a cold November
afternoon in 2008, with an open fre crackling off-camera but within
earshot, I sat with Ed in his Ithaca, NY, home. He lay on the couch
for the duration of the interview, too weak to sit up.
It was a real privilege to spend a few hours with Ed and to learn
about his extraordinary life. He was a most gracious interviewee:
patient with my ignorance of almost all aspects of astrophysics, and
ready to answer all my stream of questions with enthusiasm and
grace. Since there was no avoiding the reality that death lay around
the corner, our conversation had both an inescapable weight and
a unique openness. Ed spoke with the candour of someone who
knew that there was nothing left to hide and that the interview
would only be released after his passing. Professor Edwin Salpeter
died two weeks later.’

OWEN GINGERICH
I met Owen Gingerich at the International Symposium held in San
Marino 29–31 August 2008 on ‘Creativity and creative inspiration
viii PREFACE

in mathematics, science, and engineering: developing a vision for

the future’ where both he and I gave papers. I was impressed by his
paper and conversations and decided to interview him.

JOHN POLKINGHORNE
I only met John Polkinghorne twice, at the two interviews I did with
him. The frst interview was so interesting that he agreed to come
back for a second. I found his combination of high-level science and
very sophisticated ability in theology to be most fascinating and by
the end of the second meeting the interview was starting to turn more
into a dialogue as I became impressed and intrigued by his views.

Mark Turin and Alan Macfarlane

Transcriber’s Note

The transformation of videographed speeches into the written

word has been a riveting experience. Transcriptions, while retaining
the essence of a conversation, lend a new dimension to the oral
transmission, opening them up to a wider readership, including
those with diminished auditory functions.
The intellectual discourses in the three transcripts on the
history of science, in particular, science and religion, draw in the
reader as a participant. And, while offering a different order of
internal cohesiveness, accentuates the ability of the reader to retain
information, in this case, of knowledge and scholarship.
This collection of transcripts tries to capture the engaging
interactions between Alan Macfarlane, one of Britain’s foremost
social anthropologists, and three eminent physicists and historians
of science – Edwin Salpeter, Owen Gingerich and John Polkinghorne.
Edwin Salpeter paints a vivid picture of the anti-Semitic
sentiments that prevailed in the aftermath of World War II, and
relays his work in the feld of astrophysics with equal ease. Owen
Gingerich, in the process of introducing Mennonite culture, skilfully
introduces the on-going debate between science and religion. John
Polkinghorne begins with his days in applied mathematics and
physics and then moves on to the more fundamental aspects and
linkages between science and religion.
Here, it must however be noted that not being a subject expert
has been somewhat limiting. Besides, I have had to acquaint myself
with speech patterns, accents, diction and intonations in areas that
I was unfamiliar with when I began.
Furthermore, the transcribing of oral transmission leaves little
room to represent facial expressions and non-verbalized sounds such
as chuckles, laughs, sighs and for that matter exclamations, as well
x TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

as pauses and idiosyncrasies in actual speech. Thus, I have taken

the liberty to replace them with closely corresponding punctuations,
so as not to alter the meaning or import of what is being said.
Discrepancies in speech patterns have been isolated and addressed.
Any misrepresentation of words and phrases, is entirely inadvertent.
The trust and generosity of Professor Macfarlane in sharing his
wealth of scholarship with Social Science Press cannot be adequately
expressed in words.

– Radha Béteille
Introduction
Alan Macfarlane

There have been many autobiographical accounts of the creative

process in science as well as in the arts, humanities and social
sciences. Yet these tend to concentrate on one level, and within that
one aspect, the cerebral, intellectual working of a single thinker’s
mind. If we are to investigate further the connections between the
levels of civilization, institution, network and individual, and the ffth
dimension of chance or random variation, we need to supplement
these accounts, in particular by letting scientists and others talk in a
relaxed way about what they think has been important in their lives
and works. Over the years I have been collecting such data and here
I would like to describe how this happened and what opportunities
it opens up for further understanding of the springs of creativity.

***
There is a puzzle as to why I have spent so much time and effort (and
expense) on interviewing (on flm) a large number of academics and
others over the years. No one else has done this as far as I am aware
and it has few tangible rewards except the occasional gratitude of
one’s colleagues. Why and how did this project build up over the
years to a point where I now have about 250 lengthy interviews,
almost all of them on the web?
One factor is clearly my anthropological training and the
experience of anthropological feldwork. Although some social
historians of the recent past began to become interested in oral history
and the tape recording of memories from the late 1960s, for example
xii INTRODUCTION

Paul Thompson, Brian Harrison and others, on the whole historians

deal with dead people who cannot be interviewed. Certainly, as a
17th century historian I was not interested in interviews.
Anthropologists, on the other hand, deal with the living and the
‘life history’ or in-depth study of one or two ‘informants’ naturally
leads into the use of recording devices – again usually tape recorders,
but also sometimes flm cameras, to record interviews. So, from my
frst feldwork in 1968–70 in Nepal, I was aware of the potential
of interviews. Alongside the interviews with intellectuals described
below, I have made in-depth interviews with my anthropological
subjects, in particular a ten-part interview with Dilmaya Gurung in
1992. I also taped and flmed members of my family talking about
their lives, especially my grandmother in 1978.
My interest in biographical details as a source of social
history was also stimulated by the accident of moving through a
number of different intellectual landscapes in my early years. My
grandmother’s stories of Burma and India and then my mother’s
vivid autobiographical writings in her letters and when she visited
me from India were early infuences which led to an interest in
listening to older people talking about their lives. So, when I became
an undergraduate and then a graduate at Oxford (1960–66) I spent
some time listening to elderly academics, particularly my history
tutor Lady Rosalind Clay with her deep immersion in the world of
Oxford life through her father A.L. Smith (Master of Balliol), Sir
Henry Clay, her husband and links to the Michison and Mitford
families. She seemed to know personally many of the people whose
books I was reading – Namier, Tawney, Trevelyan, Hill, Habakkuk,
and she told me about their lives and personalities. I also began
to hear about the folklore and gossip of historians from my other
teachers – Harry Pitt, Keith Thomas and others.
The world of the historians was brought into relief by being on
the edge of another group of academics, the social anthropologists.
As I did my D.Phil. on witchcraft I began to meet the older
members of the distinguished school of anthropologists, the
Lienhardts, John Beattie and above all E.E. Evans-Pritchard. This
was a particularly intense and gossip-connected tribe and I heard
 INTRODUCTION xiii

their stories of the great feuds and friendships and how they had
survived their feldwork.
The interest in biography was also strengthened by my early
apprenticeship in history at Oxford where I was taught how
important it was to study not only the works but also the lives
of great historians – Gibbon, Macaulay, de Tocqueville, Bede and
others. This led me much later in my life to write detailed studies
of other major fgures in books on Montesquieu, Adam Smith, ee
Tocqueville, Maitland, Fukuzawa and others which put a strong
emphasis on the biography as well as the ideas.
As a social historian I wanted to get inside the mentality as well as
the social structure of the past. As an undergraduate I had discovered
that letters (Pastons, Stonors) and diaries (Pepys, Kilvert) were
wonderful sources for social history. So, my frst book was a study
of the life of one individual The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, based
on the diary of a 17th century clergyman. Henceforth I collected
letters, autobiographies, diaries, travellers’ journals and made a great
deal of use of this biographical material in a number of my books.
The early experience of eavesdropping on what appeared to be a
disappearing world of a certain academic endeavour in the pre-War
world of Oxford history and anthropology, was reinforced by moving
to the London School of Economics (LSE) for two years, where giants
of the post-Malinowski generation, Raymond Firth, Isaac Schapera,
Lucy Mair, were on the point of retiring. Then when I moved to the
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) I met another group of
giants from a previous age, particularly Adrian Mayer and Christoph
von Fürer-Haimendorf who became my supervisor.
When I moved as a research fellow to Cambridge in 1971, I
encountered again several oral worlds which intrigued me. There
were a new set of older anthropologists, Meyer Fortes, Audrey
Richards, G.I. Jones, Edmund Leach, S.J. Tambiah, Jack Goody
among them. And there were a group set of historians, in particular
Peter Laslett and Tony Wrigley. A third world was that of King’s
College, where memories of the Bloomsbury era lingered on with
Dadie Rylands, Peter Avery, Christopher Morris, Richard Braithwaite
and others.
xiv INTRODUCTION

With six or seven sets of oral history washing through my life

by the age of thirty it would have been a rather insensitive and
myopic young scholar who did not realize that he was experiencing
something special and perhaps something that should be recorded
for posterity. I did not want to write a conventional history of
academic disciplines, yet I had a sense that there were webs of ideas
and connections which were carried by elderly individuals which
should be recorded. They should be treated with the same respect and
desire to save and document as was accorded to small oral cultures
around the world whose myths, legends, rituals and folklore was
carefully recorded by anthropologists.
It was perhaps a jumble of such motives, combined with
friendship with the Director of the Cambridge University Audio-
Visual Unit, Martin Gienke, which led to the frst experiment to
record academics on flm. I had been asked to organize a series of
seminars in history and anthropology in 1976–77 for the Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC) and this I knew would be a
chance to gather together some of the leading thinkers in both felds.
If they were coming for several days to Cambridge, might it not
be an idea to flm them, both as an archive for future generations
and to show to students and colleagues who could not come to the
meetings? So, I organized the seminars and two were flmed. Amongst
those attending were many younger scholars who would become
well known – Maurice Bloch, Raphael Samuel, Keith Thomas, Keith
Hopkins, Peter Burke, and a number of more senior fgures in their
prime such as E.P. Thompson, Edmund Leach, Maurice Godelier,
Jack Goody, Arnoldo Momiliagno and Ernest Gellner.
I had assumed that this experiment, which is up on the web
would be repeated by others as the technology became better. Yet,
to my knowledge, it has hardly ever been duplicated. One of the
few instances when something similar was done was again an idea
I had. When making a six-part series for Channel 4 on the history
of the world over the last 10,000 years, we assembled fve leading
historians and they talked for two days about various aspects of the
past. The whole was flmed and is also up on the web.
 INTRODUCTION xv

The next step was probably infuenced by this early flming

attempt. Jack Goody had been involved in the flmed seminar and
fve years later, with the help of the Cambridge linguist Stephen
Levinson, he arranged three seminars where Meyer Fortes, Audrey
Richards and M.N. Srinivas would be flmed talking about their lives
and work. Jack Goody then retired, but continued to take an interest
in the project and interviewed several others for me, including John
Barnes and Jean La Fontaine.
In 1982 a portable video camera which took low-band U-matic
was available and so I founded the Rivers Video Project with several
of my PhD students, to experiment with the use of flm in teaching
and research in anthropology. Among the early projects were several
biographical and archival flms, including a flm of Brian Hodgson
and a long interview in June 1983 of my supervisor Christoph von
Fürer-Haimendorf. The group also flmed my undergraduate lectures
and some of the students made a flm as part of their course on
T.R. Malthus.
Now that I had started to flm interviews, I could see the way in
which my early interest in the gossip and interconnections of what
was in effect a small tribe of British social anthropologists could
be turned into a permanent record. The frst interviews tended to
be done by someone who knew the subject well – Goody in the
cases above, Jean La Fontaine interviewing Lucy Mair, Caroline
Humphrey interviewing Owen Lattimore. But gradually this faded
away and I did nearly all the interviews and all the flming. About
ten of the interviews were however done by friends and colleagues
abroad and sent to me.
At frst the focus was almost exclusively on anthropologists –
with some sociologists who were also anthropologists such as
André Béteille, John Barnes, Ronald Dore. Later it was extended
to others in the general area of social sciences, more sociologists
and some historians.
The flming continued to be done for the next 10 or 15 years
on low-band U-matic and the tapes were stored away. It was not
easy or necessary to edit them, but nor was it easy to show them,
xvi INTRODUCTION

so very few were ever shown to students or colleagues. I looked

at the collection as an archival collection, a time capsule of a
vanishing world, which might be interesting in a hundred years
time. That was assuming that it would be possible to play them.
Already twenty years after they were made the tapes of the ESCR
seminars were unplayable in Cambridge and had to be saved by
the National Film Council.
Then a set of interconnected technological changes occurred
which affected many of my projects. The internet and high-speed
broadband made it possible to send flms across the world. Large
external hard discs and new compression techniques made it possible
to store and edit the flms. The arrival of a digital repository in
Cambridge in 2004 made it possible to put up the interviews we
had done until that date in June of that year, an idea frst suggested
by Mark Turin.
This development, which meant that the material could be
appreciated by many more people, and the arrival of better cameras
for the flming, meant that I began to increase the number of my
interviews. By 2004 I had done about 30 interviews, by 2006 there
were about 70 interviews and lectures. I described my project
in relation to the arts, humanities and social sciences to some
colleagues in King’s College. The scientists Patrick Bateson and
Herbert Huppert were excited by the idea and asked whether I
could extend the flming to cover the natural and physical sciences.
I was surprised that very few people or organizations appeared
to be doing the in-depth ‘lives and works’ kind of interviews I had
undertaken for the immensely larger felds of the sciences. (Two
sites which did have interviews on were that at globetrotter.berkeley
and the Vega project at Sussex initiated by Harry Kroto). I was also
hesitant about my ability to interview in felds about which I knew
nothing. But they urged me to try and introduced me to a number
of distinguished scientists. Shortly afterwards Gabriel Horn became
an active advisor on the project as well.
I started gingerly with the scientists, flming Dan McKenzie
with whom I shared a room in King’s, the co-discoverer of tectonic
plates and continental drift. It went well and I greatly enjoyed it. Pat
 INTRODUCTION xvii

Bateson then interviewed Gabriel Horn and I flmed another session

with them talking about their partnership, and I interviewed Pat
Bateson himself. So, I was now suffciently confdent to interview
other scientists. Having broadened it beyond arts and social sciences,
there was all the world which lay between, such as economics,
psychology, philosophy and so on. There were also other interesting
people I wanted to flm – the Vice Chancellor Alison Richard, the
ex-Cabinet Secretary Richard Wilson, the musician John Rutter, the
sculptor Anthony Gormley.
In fact, the series broadened out not only into politicians and
civil servants, but into many other felds. There are interviews on
the performing and visual arts, crafts and skills (pottery, gardening,
sculpture), law, journalism, literary criticism, business, exploration,
publishing, the military, filmmaking, classics, archaeology,
architecture and linguistics. Whenever I heard of or met someone
who seemed to have made a creative contribution to the world,
whether they were a road sweeper or a College butler, up to some of
the most distinguished thinkers in the world, I would try to interview
them. It is a wide spread.
So, from May 2007 when the frst scientists were flmed, until
September 2009 when I formally retired as Professor, I flmed
something like another 80 interviews and the total now stands at
about 250 flms.
As far as I know this archive is unique and as a number of
the major fgures are dead and others are getting very old, so the
interviewing cannot now be done. There are some small projects,
sometimes infuenced by our experiments, in Germany, the London
School of Economics and elsewhere. Yet on the whole there is
nothing quite like this.

***
Naturally the way in which I have done the interviews refects both
my own interests and my experience of what works. My central aim
has been to let the speakers tell their own story, present themselves
as they wish to do, without threatening or probing or adversarial
xviii INTRODUCTION

questioning. Yet in doing so, and with a roughly chronological

approach, I have been particularly interested in the question of what
accidents, historical contingencies, or personal traits have infuenced
the subjects and sent them towards a particular career. In particular,
what they do has contributed to their more creative and sometimes
inspired work and innovation in their various felds.
From the very start of my interest in the oral history of my seniors
and contemporaries, I have been keen to learn what I should do to
make me as good an anthropologist and historian as possible. What
are the craft skills and what are the ways of thinking and ordering
one’s life which will maximize the chance of making a serious
contribution to our knowledge of the world? This early interest
was heightened when I found myself in the incredibly privileged
surroundings of Cambridge for forty years, surrounded by the ghosts
of Newton, Darwin, Rutherford and many others.
The following describes the topics I have tried to cover in my
interviews. On the surface, the interviews are almost unstructured
and I avoid referring to a written questionnaire as this can distract
from the spontaneity of the occasion. I encourage the interviewee
to talk about whatever they would like. My role is similar to a
psychiatrist’s, that is to say to let the subject narrate their life,
in particular in relation to the obstacles and encouragements to
creativity and discovery. We tend to cover the following:

when and where born

ancestry – going back as far as they like, including occupation
and temperament and possible effects of grand-parents, parents
and siblings
frst memories and hobbies as a child
frst and subsequent schools, with important teachers, hobbies,
subjects which gripped them, sports and games, music, special
books
university and those who taught and studied with them and
interests there
frst research, supervisors, mentors, infuences
 INTRODUCTION xix

jobs and career and travels through life, work abroad

colleagues, friends and network of workers, partners and children
methods of working and thinking
major achievements and problem-solving during life, how they
occurred, including especially important bursts of activity
administrative tasks
teaching and supervising of students
effects of their work environment (laboratories, departments,
Colleges etc)
philosophy and religion
political views and activities
advice for a young person starting out in their feld
specifcally ask if there is anything which they would like to have
talked about and I have omitted to ask about

Yet if the subject does not want to follow this order, or to answer
all of these, or to add further subjects, that is fne. What I want
the reader to see is the inside of a life, told in a conversational and
personal way.

***
The interviews are an intimate probing of personal experience,
usually by a complete stranger who is holding a potentially
threatening video camera. The subjects know that this may be seen
by almost anyone in the world – friends, students, competitors, and
enemies, now and in the future. This could be intimidating, especially
to older subjects and for those who share a widespread reserve and
distaste for talking about themselves.
I have, therefore, developed a number of techniques for putting
the subjects at their ease. These have contributed, I believe, to the
rather startlingly honest and trusting conversations which I have
managed to have with a wide range of near strangers. It is worth
briefy summarizing these since they could be helpful for others who
help to extend this project.
xx INTRODUCTION

1. It is important to have a fairly small and unostentatious camera

that does not dominate or frighten the subject. The less intrusive
the microphone the better – which is one reason why I have
given up using lapel microphones. I place the camera on my
knees and do not use a tripod, which can again be intimidating.
2. The room in which the interview is done is important. I avoid
formal settings if possible – lecture theatres, ‘offces’, and
seminar rooms. A room with gentle furnishings, an easy chair
for both interviewee and interviewer, books and pictures and
objects in the background, a pleasant view all helps. And of
course, absolute silence and absence of telephones, mobiles,
computers and interruptions is essential. I do not sit too close,
or too far away. I sit at the same level, as I would do in any
normal relaxed conversation between friends.
3. I try to develop the sheepdog technique. When gently moving
a fock of sheep to its destination, a good sheepdog is mostly
silent and still. Each time the sheep move in a satisfactory
direction, the dog creeps forward. And then sinks onto the
grass and waits attentively. It does not bark, just guides. So, if
possible, I try to help the interviewee along, but only interrupt
when they need encouragement or direction. I never shut them
off (though I occasionally warn them if the conversation is
getting into the realms of damaging speech and check that
they are aware of this), but try to bring them to subjects as
they are needed.
4. I always try to show interest, however little I know, or even
care about the subject being discussed. What is being said is
often important to the subject and has a depth which I, or
others, may only realize later. They deserve serious attention
and respect for what is often a summary of a life. Of course, I
may verbally disagree a little, or query things, but I try always
to do so in the pursuit of a common goal of understanding.
Curiosity is the most important attribute.
5. It is important for there to be no sense of rush. If I want an
hour of flm, I allow 90 minutes, which gives time for general
conversation, a cup of tea etc.
 INTRODUCTION xxi

6. I used to prepare carefully for the interviews. With people in

my own subjects, this was possible. With scientists, beyond
reading a brief life in an encyclopaedia, I cannot really prepare.
It seems to work as well without preparation.
7. I used to think that it would be good if the ‘subjects’ prepared
themselves in some detail, and when they asked me, I would
advise this. In fact, I have found that spontaneity, even if it
leads to some confusion, forgetting of names etc., is better and
I advise people not to think about the interview – just that it
will be chronological and they can say what they like (though
they can look at one or two of the earlier interviews on the
web if they would like to do so).
8. The fact that there is no commercial side to the endeavour has
an effect. That I am doing it without specifc pay for the job
and not as part of a well-funded project, is usually obvious
and helps. That all the materials are freely available on the
web, can be downloaded for free anywhere in the world and
used in teaching and research, all adds to the trust and spirit
of altruistic collaboration.
9. The absence of any bureaucracy is important. We enter into an
implicit contract. I have no paper for them to sign, assigning
copyright, intellectual property rights etc. It is all agreed
verbally and informally in the act itself. And hence the bond
of friendship is not broken.
10. One of the things that has developed over the years and has
greatly increased the interest and usability of the interviews is
the possibility of putting up a summary with some time codes to
help viewers navigate to an area that particularly interests them.
The summaries are often very detailed and the development
of the web has again made them more interesting and reliable
since one can check names, theories, and connections. They
also summarize much of the essence and fow of the interview.
It is an art form in itself, combining considerable synthetic
skills, a jigsaw ability and great concentration. It is not easy,
but the website gives many examples of highly professional
examples which have won high praise from the interview
xxii INTRODUCTION

subjects who are often amazed at how accurate and complete

they are. The obvious comprehension shown in the summary
further adds to the sense of trust.
11. Before the interview it is important to explain that anything
that is said can be retracted or glossed later. People should
not censor themselves too much. Candour and a relaxed fow
of ideas are important and trying to avoid things detracts
from this. I explain that while flming – before or after saying
something – the interviewee can easily say ‘this is not for public
dissemination’, ‘this is confdential’ or whatever. Any such
passage is then excised from the version that becomes publicly
available – but the original tapes are kept for posterity. I also
explain that we will send them the full summary which needs
to be checked for accuracy (especially names and technical
terms), interpretations of statements, and also gives the person
a chance to withdraw any section or passage if they wish. They
may, as has sometimes happened, feel that they want to add
something – some more autobiography, a clearer exposition
of something technical. It is not diffcult to put this into the
summary either in square brackets or as an appendix.
12. The duration of time people can concentrate varies. Most people
can manage an hour, and then, with a break, another hour.
When the tape ends, I allow a few minutes for revival – but it
is important not to lose the momentum. Some people prefer
to do an hour, go away and come back some days later. This is
alright, but can lead to repetition. But for older subjects (and
many of mine are in their later eighties and older) it may be
necessary. The older subjects also often feel more comfortable
in their own homes amongst their books and belongings. This
often gives an added dimension to the interviews.

If the subjects do reveal things which should be kept private for

some years or even decades, these are edited out of the versions
that go on the web, but the original tapes and full interviews will
be preserved for posterity. Meanwhile the edited versions are put up
on DSpace at Cambridge and on other websites, including YouTube,
 INTRODUCTION xxiii

and now increasingly on websites all over the world – Scandinavia,

America, China and elsewhere. The value of the interviews is
enormously enhanced by the excellent and thorough summaries
which Sarah Harrison has made of most of them, taking much more
time and skill to do than the interviews themselves.
What has been created, through a set of accidents, is a resource
for the study of a number of academic disciplines, from anthropology
to molecular biology, from history to astronomy, from sociology to
mathematics. It also provides rich material for the study of British
academic life and institutions in the 20th century. Furthermore, for
those interested in the conditions of creativity and discovery, it is
a unique archive.
The project has developed as a result of a set of accidents and
through the help and support of many people, in particular Sarah
Harrison, Mark Turin, Jack Goody, Gerry Martin and many others.
However, the project to publish the full interviews of selected
individuals was the idea of Esha Béteille, whose support and advice
have been indispensable. I would particularly like to thank Radha
Béteille who it has been a great pleasure to work with. Her transcripts
and editing have been extraordinarily well done and I am deeply
impressed and grateful for her contribution. Institutions such as
Cambridge University (DSpace and the Streaming Media Service in
particular) and King’s College, as well as the British Academy, the
Leverhulme Trust, the Firebird Foundation and others have also
made all this possible. It is hoped that others will take the task on
through the 21st century.
PART
one

DOI: 10.4324/9781003222446-1
Edwin Salpeter. Photograph courtesy Alan Macfarlane.
Edwin Ernest Salpeter

Edwin Ernest Salpeter (1924–2008) was an Austrian–Australian–

American astrophysicist. Born in Vienna to a Jewish family, Salpeter
emigrated from Austria to Australia while in his teens to escape the
Nazis. He attended Sydney Boys High School (1939–40) and Sydney
University, where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in 1944 and
his Master’s degree in 1945. In the same year, he was awarded an
overseas scholarship and attended the University of Birmingham,
England. He earned his doctorate in 1948 under the supervision of
Sir Rudolf Peierls. He spent the remainder of his career at Cornell
University, where he was the James Gilbert White Distinguished
Professor of the Physical Sciences. Salpeter died of leukemia at his
home in Ithaca, New York, on 26 November 2008.
In 1951, Salpeter suggested that stars could burn helium-4 into
carbon-12 with the Triple-alpha process not directly, but through
an intermediate metastable state of beryllium-8. This helped to
explain the carbon production in stars. He later derived the initial
mass function for the formation rates of stars of different mass in
the Galaxy.
Salpeter, with Hans Bethe, wrote two articles in 1951 which
introduced the equation bearing their names — the Bethe–Salpeter
equation, which describes the interactions between a pair of
fundamental particles under a quantum feld theory.
In 1955, he found the Salpeter function or the initial mass
function (IMF). It shows that the number of stars in each mass range
decreases rapidly with increasing mass.
In 1964, Salpeter and independently Yakov B. Zel’dovich, were
the frst to suggest that accretion discs around massive black holes
are responsible for the huge amounts of energy radiated by quasars
DOI: 10.4324/9781003222446-2
4 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

(which are the brightest active galactic nuclei). This is currently the
most accepted explanation for the physical origin of active galactic
nuclei and the associated extragalactic relativistic jets.
Along with Hans Bethe, Salpeter published Quantum Mechanics
of One- and Two-Electron Atoms (1957) and Atoms I (1957).1
 EDWIN ERNEST SALPETER 5

Mark Turin (MT): It gives me great pleasure to sit here with you,
Professor Emeritus Edwin Salpeter from Cornell University. Today is
12 November 2008. We are here on a cold Ithaca winter afternoon,
but inside a warm house with a fre on. Could I ask you Ed, frst,
where and when you were born?
Edwin Salpeter (ES): I was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1924 and I
spent much of my frst fve years in Budapest. That was a time when
there was a lot of back and forth between Austria and Hungary. It
wasn’t then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but my dad went to a
job in Budapest for fve years.
MT: Do you have any memories of those early years back and forth?
ES: No. Not at all. A few years later, when I was a pre-teenager,
we went back to Hungary and in a week, I managed to pick up
Hungarian words more quickly than other people. But no, I don’t
really have any memory from back then. But maybe, the one thing
I accomplished is learning how to swim in a pool that went with
my dad’s frm.
MT: What work was he doing that took him to Budapest?
ES: Immediately after his PhD, he was very university-inclined
and even wrote a textbook called Mathematical Methods for
Physicists and Medical Doctors, but it became fairly clear that
there was too much anti-Semitism for that. Especially, he had a
close friend from his own university’s days when Schrödinger2, who
of course got a Nobel Prize soon after. I had relatives in Europe
and they advised my dad that you are just not going to make it
in universities, but industries were much more open-minded and
much less anti-Semitic.
MT: I wonder why that was. Do you have any thoughts about that
in retrospect?
This interview was conducted by Mark Turin on 12 November 2008 in Ithaca,
New York. It was made fourteen days before Edwin Salpeter died when he was
seriously ill in bed. The transcription for this interview has been provided by
Radha Béteille, for this volume.
These interviews are available for viewing on:
http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1130197
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEnG6lyWoOM
6 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

ES: No, not at all except that industry in a War is most about making
a good living and the sociology was not so important.
MT: You have already said that you were born in the inter-War
period in Austria to a Jewish family with a professional father
who had an academic background as well, a PhD, what about
your mother?
ES: She got a PhD in physics, but gave up working as soon as I
was born which was just a year and a half after they got married.
After I was born, she would give lessons occasionally, but she didn’t
really work fully.
MT: What was the physics of the early 1920s in Austria? What
research did your parents do for their doctorates?
ES: Really, quite a lot. My dad did something on the early days of
radioactivity, or at least, how radioactivity affected currents in what
would otherwise be insulators, assuming that I would do something
on highly isolated insulators. So, my dad’s radioactivity almost ran
into some trouble with Schrödinger’s experiments, but he managed
to work it out.
MT: What was Vienna like as far as you can recall in the inter-War
years? Was it a dynamic and lively place or was there already a
build-up of fear of what was coming from Germany?
ES: There was a lot of build-up of fear of everything, not just of
Germany. We happened to live in a house which was opposite, a
big apartment house of workers’ fats, across the road from a local
gendarmerie. When I was 12 years old, they had an actual civil war
right across our corner, with my mum trying to keep me away from
the window, but that’s not easy to do with an 11- or 12-year-old’s
room because there was a war going on. Now I would say, at least
for a Jew, it was not a pleasant place.
MT: The Jewish community of which you are a part, was it like one
thinks of it in many parts of Germany where intellectual, educated
Jews are very assimilated? Called themselves frst Germans and
secondarily Jews?
ES: Yes. Certainly, certainly.
 EDWIN ERNEST SALPETER 7

MT: Can you tell me a bit about your memories the Jewish
community when you were young and what it meant for you and
your family?
ES: In Austria, very little. I had a few boyfriends and because of its
great anti-Semitism, even at that stage, you had more friends of your
own persuasion. So, it was more that my friends were mostly Jewish.
MT: But already, by the late 1920s and early 1930s there were
anti-Jewish measures in place to make your father’s professional life
diffcult and your schooling was also impacted, I think.
ES: The schooling, there’s some controversy between my mother
and me. Namely, when I was about 10 years old, when you’ve
fnished elementary school, you had to take an exam to get into the
gymnasium — a gymnasium is a sort of high school of all kinds and
you absolutely needed that to do anything else. And lo and behold,
I funked the entrance exam. My mother said, ‘Well it’s just that the
authorities are all anti-Semitic and you should’ve passed easily’. My
theory was that, sure, there was a lot of anti-Semitism, but I mainly
funked because I kept reading a Wild West story writer called Karl
May3 who wrote for some reason about the US Wild West, but in
German for German boys. And of course, one will never know which
was the main story, presumably it was a little bit of both.
MT: What were your parents’ names?
ES: My dad’s name was Jacob Leib. It was a custom that even if
you were not a very religious Jew that you would take on a Jewish
middle name. And I think Leib is lion. My mum, on the other hand,
had a long frst name Friederika that she didn’t bother having a
second name.
MT: Do you at all remember your mother’s maiden name?
ES: Horn.
MT: And, do you have any memories or stories about your
grandparents on either side?
ES: My grandparents, my dad’s parents and relatives, I absolutely
never met even. My dad had come from Galicia, which kept changing
from Romania to Poland to God knows what. He left for study in
Indiana, but his Galician relatives did not come together.
8 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

MT: Do you know what happened to them? Out of interest?

ES: Yes. We had a relative who died in the meantime, a bit older than
me or you —— somehow cooped up and of course they were all
murdered, in fact, many of them by just the local Poles who at that
time were in charge of Galicia. And then of course the remainder by
the Nazis. But as I say, I absolutely never had any knowledge of them.
MT: And what about your mother’s parents? And her relatives,
brothers and sisters?
ES: That was much easier because I lived in an apartment house
which was owned jointly by my mother and her mother. My
grandfather on that side, I never knew. He died either before I
was born or before I could have remembered. So, him I don’t
remember, but of course, I remember stories about him. We even
had a photograph of him proudly driving a car when my mother
was eight years old or so.
MT: What stories do you recall? Was he a stern man or a warm and
loving father to your mother?
ES: I don’t know those stories but he was very proud. He was an
electrical engineer and he was very proud of being assimilated. He
once even, there was tiger that had escaped from a travelling show
and he shot the tiger. That was one of the big stories. My mother
as a girl travelled a lot. Especially in summer times, he would go
to build mostly electric railroads, that was his passion, but his
main thing was converting funiculars and other things into being
run on electricity.
MT: That’s a great lineage, from a maternal grandfather as electrical
engineer, a mother a physicist, yourself an astrophysicist, but I’m
thinking back now to the early 1900s when your mother was
probably born. To have a young Jewish woman have a chance
to do a PhD in physics, it has to be quite an enlightened and an
intellectually experimental family to want that for their daughter,
any way at the time.
ES: My mother had really wanted to study medicine but the
authorities at the university decided that there was money in
medicine. Medicine is a useful and important area, so they absolutely
 EDWIN ERNEST SALPETER 9

would not let her study medicine. But physics seemed such a
completely useless topic, they did not mind her doing that.
MT: Can you tell me a little bit about your memories, any anecdotes
about that period in Vienna, up until, I think, your departure to
Australia before the outbreak of War.
ES: For me personally, the most interesting thing was my attitude
towards areas of endeavour and school. We had lived in a very non-
intellectual suburb and I was in a school that wasn’t in any way
selective, so I was top of my class in all subjects I did. But I was
not, in any way, interested in the future so to speak, what I would
want to do when I grew up and how I should make decisions of
that kind, not at all.
MT: Aside from yourself, were there other children, do you have
brothers and sisters?
ES: I have a half-sister. My dad, before he had married my mother,
had married a Catholic woman with the intention of getting
divorced immediately after. He got her pregnant before they got
married. But he went to a lot of trouble, which in a way is slightly
surprising, he became a Catholic just for the marriage so that he
could be able to say that father and mother were both Catholics.
My sister was given a very Christian and Catholic frst name, Maria
Christina and that was partly because her mother already felt that
they might have to pretend that she was fully non-Jewish. When
the War happened, they emigrated, my sister and her mother, from
Vienna to Waldkirch, which is a little town at the border between
Austria, Lichtenstein and Switzerland just to be away from any
people who might have known somebody in Vienna —— might
have known the mother and my father and remembered that my
father was Jewish.
MT: They survived the War?
ES: They survived the War. My sister’s mother survived to quite a
high age and although they could by that time move back to Vienna,
they stayed all the time in Waldkirch. My sister married a Swiss
businessman and he didn’t mind living in Waldkirch either. All three
of them stayed in Waldkirch.
10 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

MT: She shares your last name — Salpeter — which means what
out of interest?
ES: Yes. Potassium nitrate in German and saltpetre is the equivalent
thing.
MT: So, the reason that all your family became physicists was to
escape the chemistry?
ES: It could well be, yes. It turns out, when I was in college in Sydney I
got very interested in Chemistry and I almost switched my Major from
Physics to Chemistry, but not quite, I switched back. I have had almost
as many papers published in chemical journals as in physics ones.
MT: Essentially you grew up as an only child?
ES: Essentially, I grew up as an only child. I mean we would meet
typically every second Sunday somewhere and have dinner at some
mountain resort.
MT: Did your parents never think of having more children? Or was
it a build-up of tensions and hostilities, it wasn’t prudent to have
a second child?
ES: Things were pretty bad throughout, frst Austria, then the War and
for a while it looked as though the Japanese might invade Australia,
so no they really never ever thought of having one more child.
MT: At a certain point your family and you left Vienna and moved
to Australia. Do you recall when that was and can you tell me a little
bit about the steps of that move, of that exile underway.
ES: Yes. I should go back, a little more to my dad when he went into
industry. He, very soon, specialized in running incandescent lamp
factories. But as outsiders. There was a big cartel run mainly by
Phillips Electrical Industries, but he started with one of the outsider
frms, so he had patent fghts and so on. That was what he did for a
living. When we were trying to get out of Austria-Germany — at frst
he was of course the usual Jew, saying that it wouldn’t happen here
in this country of Beethoven and Mozart, but after Kristallnacht4 —
which was just a few days ago this month. It’s interesting, different
people seem to differ exactly which day in November it was.
But any way, after that he started getting interested in fnding
a job somewhere and emigrating. So, I am always inclined to say
 EDWIN ERNEST SALPETER 11

Kristallnacht saved my life. At any rate, luckily for him, there was in
Sydney, a manufacturer of glass, including the glass for light bulbs.
He used to sell light bulbs to the cartel, to Phillips, but they claimed
his light bulbs were getting too expensive, so they threatened to make
their own light bulb. They needed somebody to be boss of their light
bulb factory, so my father was clearly the kind of guy.
They are all ready, in principle, in December, but he had to
match the raw materials that were not there in Australia. So, we
had to go via London. He went a little bit earlier. My mother went
in about January.
MT: Which year?
ES: 1939. Kristallnacht itself was 1938. Then I think, in early
January, my mother and I also came on to London and we stayed
for about two months. In Australia, growing up, I did not know
much English but I already had an English accent, not the Australian
accent, for a while.
MT: Because of those two…en route.
ES: Yes. A part of that I was even in a boarding school.
MT: For those two months?
ES: No, just only a few weeks.
MT: Was there any chance that your father would have ended up
in the States or in the UK or perhaps Holland which at that point
hadn’t been occupied and that’s where Phillips was based.
ES: Certainly not the USA, because you Yanks were very anti-refugees
and anti-immigration, so there was no way to get a visa to the
USA. For a while we considered very peculiar sounding places like
Bucharest in Romania. He had to look at almost any other country
that might possibly give him a job.
MT: With your move via London to Australia, did you sever your
ties with Vienna at the time or did you each have one suitcase you
could bring or did you make more of a formal move and take as
many belongings as you could with you. What kind of move was it?
ES: It was a complicated set of double play. When, frst my mother
and I after Kristallnacht, were kicked out of our apartment with
just one suitcase each and then also for leaving Austria, all we
12 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

could take with us was one suitcase each. But my mother managed
to get together some of the more important things in the house
and hire an Austrian or German shipping contractor to send it on
to Sydney. These things take a long time but surely enough that
whole big, enormous crate paid for by a German shipping company,
arrived in Sydney after the War had started. At some levels they
are very thorough.
MT: Your parents weren’t immediately interned in a refugee camp
for coming from enemy territory? Your belongings were given to
you, they weren’t taken by the authorities?
ES: Yes. Interestingly enough that they didn’t mind at all.
MT: What did your grandmother, your mother’s mother who was
living with you also in that apartment...?
ES: Not the apartment, the apartment house, she had her own.
MT: What happened to her when you were evicted?
ES: She was sent to Theresienstadt5 and murdered there.
MT: So, you arrived in Australia in the new year of 1939, to what
kind of country was it? How did it feel on arrival?
ES: For a teenager, it was just an ideal country to grow up in. In many,
many different ways. It is an outdoor country so you could spend
your time what they call bushwalking or hiking in the wilderness
or in the Blue Mountains.6
MT: Was the education system very different? Did it take you some
time to adjust to that and also studying in a new language, English?
ES: The new language led to my getting through quicker. The
timing of high school years was different. Somehow it looked to
the authorities as though they should put me into fourth grade even
though I had in fact been in the equivalent of second grade. They
could not give me a test on the subject matter as I knew almost no
English in spite of the British accent with what little I did know. God
could give me an intelligence test, obviously I was fairly smart, so
just they let me study on my own for a year or so and sure enough
I managed to learn enough to get on.
MT: Was Australian society there at the start of the War a welcoming
place for a European refugee and the school also?
 EDWIN ERNEST SALPETER 13

ES: Most certainly. The school was certainly very much so and so
also most Australians.
MT: Did your parents feel at home there?
ES: Maybe not as much as I felt at home, but yes, they felt pretty
much at home.
MT: One thing that I have heard from people who, particularly in
the War, were being uprooted and unsettled, is that when you move
to a new country, you don’t want to settle down and put your roots
in. Did your parents think that this was going to be the permanent
move where they would stay? Or did they think that this country
may be our country for a while, but we may move on?
ES: No. I think it was pretty clear that it would be forever. As I said
my father had a nice industrial base, although it turned out for some
reason that quite a few years later, he switched from this to working
for Phillips itself. They were settled enough.
MT: It was easier for a teenager who was excited by all the space
and possibility, but for your parents it must have been a bit more
diffcult.
ES: Yes, it was certainly more diffcult.
MT: Did they quickly build a community of other refugees or
a Jewish community or other people with similar interests and
professional backgrounds.
ES: Yeah, refugees, not necessarily Jewish ones.
MT: One of the things that one hears a lot about in the inter-War
period is not only about assimilated Jews, but also of a kind of
hopeful socialism, the Left-leaning intellectuals of the inter-War
period, lots of publications, Arts and creativity, were your parents in
any way political or politically engaged with the Leftist movements?
ES: I would say very, very little. There were the beginnings of
student societies and I was a member of a couple that were slightly
socialist, but thank god not communist, so I was the one who
inclined that way.
MT: And your school years, aside from studying very hard and
probably doing very well, did you have any other hobbies and
interests that kept you active?
14 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

ES: Mostly bushwalking.7 I was one of the founding members of the

Sydney University Bushwalking Club, and that took a lot of time.
And also, a bit of tennis and swimming.
MT: Through your schooling and into university. Where did you
study at university?
ES: At that time there was just one university in Sydney so I had
no dilemma, no choice.
MT: Was it clear what your interests were and which direction you
were hoping to go in?
ES: I never quite fnished the story about the high school in Indiana.
As I say before Hitler, I was top of my class in this suburb school
but then in September 1938 there was just one Jewish school, so
maybe only 10–20 per cent of the Jewish children were able to go to
that school. It was just academically selective, so I found suddenly
that I was no longer top of the class in all subjects. Some of the kids
who beat me in History or English were girls. I had never been in
a school with girls so that was a very strange experience. At that
time, although life was pretty tough, I put the possibility of surviving
to become an adult reasonably low. That was just when I started
thinking of what I would do if and when I would become an adult.
MT: How much guidance, encouragement, support did you receive
from your parents in this as well?
ES: Some. Since mostly what I thought of faded in quite well with
what they were thinking. It’s usually when you’re having slight fghts
with your parents that the conversations are longer. So, there was
some, but not very much.
MT: And did your mother also work in Australia, now that you
were…?
ES: No, no, no. She did tutorials but she didn’t really work.
MT: Do you think she had professional regrets in that feld, would
she have liked to go further with her academic research?
ES: Very hard to tell. She was not all that academically minded, it’s
strange that she went through the great diffculty and trouble of
getting a PhD.
 EDWIN ERNEST SALPETER 15

MT: Through your years in high school at Australia and then into
Sydney University, what did you choose to study at university?
ES: When I found that I was not top of the class in subjects except
in maths and science, I decided that one of those is what I should
go into. Physics was what I happened to like best of these subjects,
quite apart from it being also what my parents did.
MT: What was the Physics department like? Who was the Physics
professor at the time?
ES: It was somewhat mixed at the time. Many of them were a little
bit stodgy but some were really very good. One man called Victor
Bailey8 really did important research in electricity and gases in what
now would be called plasma physics. He was very good and one
or two of the non-professors too, so it was a good place in general.
MT: And the ranks of the Faculty, also in Australia, did they become
broader and larger with emigrants from Europe or was it a very
Anglo and Australian teaching staff?
ES: The four years that I was at the University, there were not
yet many ex-European professors, there were later on, but not at
that time.
MT: It must be hard for you to look back if I ask you this question
now, were there moments when you had a nascent interest in
astronomy?
ES: Yes, but that’s a fairly complicated story. There was a man at
Caltech, at the Kellogg Radiation Lab., a nuclear experimentalist,
Willie Fowler,9 who was himself just an experimentalist, but he
knew he wanted to build up an interest in nuclear astrophysics. He
invited me to come for a summer in 1951. At that time, I didn’t know
about nuclear astrophysics, but nuclear physics is one of the things
I was a little bit of an expert in. But then when I came to Caltech,
Willie Fowler told me of an important topic, namely how you go
from helium nuclei to heavier nuclei in evolved stars. You certainly
can’t in main sequence stars —— they are only about 10,000,000
degrees in the centre, maybe something else would do it. It soon
became clear that there were giant stars although their surfaces
were pretty low temperature because they have a very large radius
16 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

and quite hot interiors. At that time, one didn’t know yet too much
about the structure of stars, but qualitatively we knew that was it.
Clearly the way to go from helium to heavier elements would be
to frst go to carbon — that’s helium-4 to carbon-12, just three of
those together would do that — but the question was in detail how
do you do it. Having a triple collision is just not very easy. Luckily,
I already knew that the in-between thing, beryllium-8 which would
be two helium nuclei instead of the three in carbon isn’t stable, that
is why you needed to do the triple alpha eventually. But it turned
out that it was almost stable, that you needed some energy to go
from two heliums to this resonant state in beryllium-8 which would
then decay back again. At any rate there was this equilibrium and
then you can easily add another alpha particle to the beryllium-8 so
that was a very easy way to get a lot of energy out of that reaction.
I then made some goofs in that as well, but unless you are interested
in Fred Hoyle,10 I won’t go into that.
MT: I have fast forwarded you, now I’m going to have to rewind
you a little, back to Sydney University. I think you excelled in your
studies there and I know that you went abroad for a PhD. Did you,
before we get to the PhD, actually do a Masters or something further
like that or did you jump straight?
ES: No. I did a Masters at that time. At the end of my undergraduate
work in Sydney, for some reason, I had got interested in quantum
electrodynamics.11 There wasn’t much work on this in Australia but
it was a red-hot topic in England and the USA. What I did for a
Master’s degree was sort of a pedagogical summary review on that
and that managed to get me a fellowship given by the Commission
for the Exhibition of 1851.
MT: A very prestigious fellowship.
ES: A very prestigious fellowship.
MT: Which you could take wherever you wanted to.
ES: You could anywhere you wanted in England, but that’s what I
wanted to do anyway.
MT: Was it clear that England was the place, not the United States
and not further in Australia?
 EDWIN ERNEST SALPETER 17

ES: Somehow, for a PhD it seemed pretty clear that you had to do
it in England, after that you could go to other places. But somehow,
there was no dilemma. It might also be that this Commission for
the Exhibition of 1851 was only for graduate schools in England.
But I then had my frst big dilemma. Mainly, I could have gone
to Cambridge where Paul Dirac12 was, and of course it was a much
more prestigious place than a red brick university, but the few people
who really knew advised me correctly that although Dirac was a
great man, he was good at answering questions, he would be a lousy
thesis advisor. At that time the best graduate school in theoretical
physics in general where Rudy Peierls13 was in Birmingham. Even
though Birmingham was a red brick university, so I am glad that in
spite of the many voices the other way, I listened to the few voices
who said I should go to Rudy Peierls. I did, and sure enough, he
was indeed the best leader of a graduate school.
MT: What were Oxford and the universities in London doing in
theoretical physics at that time?
ES: They were somewhat similar to Cambridge, not quite as
prestigious because they did not have Paul Dirac. Dirac was an
extraordinary person.
MT: You got know him later I presume?
ES: I got to know him while I was still a graduate student in
Birmingham. While I was a student in Birmingham, I used to make
pilgrimages to Cambridge to ask him, questions occasionally, but
also, I became friendly at that time with the three people who
invented steady state cosmology, Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi14 and
Tommy Gold,15 so I knew them before I had got my PhD.
MT: And your decision to go to Birmingham and take part in that
very exciting time in physics, it was vindicated you felt, despite your
trips to Cambridge where you would meet world famous physicists,
you think Birmingham was the right decision?
ES: Oh defnitely. It is very different to have the right person to be a
thesis advisor on the one hand, versus just having excellent people
of whom you ask questions. There is no doubt that Rudy Peierls
was by far the best.
18 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

MT: Could you tell me a bit about Rudy Peierls? I think I read
that you actually lived, some students lived together with him and
his wife.
ES: Yes. He had a fairly big house so after the frst year I actually
lived with him. Virginia Peierls, the daughter of a Russian General
was his wife and was also my landlady.
MT: And ‘mother’ of the Department?
ES: And the ‘mother’ of the Department, yes.
MT: Can you tell me a little bit about Rudy or Rudolph. What was
he like to work with, how did he work with his students? What
made it so stimulating?
ES: Peierls was especially great for somebody like me who wanted
to be a generalist because he worked on many different felds inside
theoretical physics. Of course, quantum electrodynamics, which I
was doing, but also statistical physics, solid state physics, many,
many others, so each graduate student had not just had a different
topic but these many different areas.
MT: He also, if I recall rightly, grew up in a Jewish family in
Germany.
ES: Yes, yes. That’s correct.
MT: Do you remember, did you speak German with him ever or
English?
ES: No, not at all. Occasionally a German proverb or something,
but I did not speak in German.
MT: What makes a great supervisor in your mind? What did he do?
ES: It’s very hard to tell. One of the things is that it helps to work
in many different felds, at least if you’re inclined that way. But the
more important thing may be that in each feld, if you have already
decided on one like quantum electrodynamics, he had a number of
different specifc topics and you could choose which one. But I guess
that most important thing here is that a good thesis advisor knows
how to draw the line between giving you detailed advice, on the one
hand, and letting you work on your own with just an occasional
remark, on the other. And Peierls really did that well.
 EDWIN ERNEST SALPETER 19

MT: He received many awards and was later knighted, except the
Nobel evaded him. He was also involved in the Manhattan Project.16
ES: Yes. He was involved in the Manhattan Project, not just that,
he arranged for Klaus Fuchs17 to also join the Manhattan Project.
And Klaus Fuchs was found to be a spy while I was still with the
Peierls’ in Birmingham. So that was a very big shock.
MT: In how many years did you take to fnish your PhD?
ES: It is not quite clear whether it was two years or three, in the
sense that I had it fnished in two years but I wanted to stay one
more year in Birmingham, but I took something like two and a half
years. In the English system, unlike here, you specialize more as an
undergraduate so you do your PhD work much faster.
MT: That meant, I suppose, graduate courses — there wasn’t much
of that, you were under supervision.
ES: There was not much of that or at least it didn’t mean much to
you. It is a pity because there were some quite good mathematics
teachers in Birmingham whose courses I could have gone to, I really
didn’t do that much.
MT: We will stop for a break in a minute, just a couple of quick
questions before we do, frstly, what was the title of your dissertation
and what did you write about?
ES: Interestingly enough, I don’t even remember the title
and furthermore I didn’t even put it in my references in my
autobiography. Not that it was wrong, it had to do with the self-
energy of the electron which I took seriously, but started with
a fnite radius for the electron and then went to zero and did
that all very vigorously. I did that okay but what I didn’t do and
should have done and was done by other people, is what is called
renormalization theory. What you are really interested in is how a
free electron differs from an electron in an atom, in particular. There
was just after I did my thesis, the experimental discovery of what is
called the Lamb shift, showing that two levels which according to
the Dirac theory should have the same energy or slightly different
ones. And as I say, my thesis topic was such that I could easily
invent that, but I didn’t even think of it.
20 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

MT: Was it a topic you chose or was it under the guidance of your
professor?
ES: No. It’s one I chose. At that time, I thought that doing rigorous
things were important or elegant, so I chose it but Peierls suggested
it among other quantum electrodynamic things. But yes, I chose it.

NOTES
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Ernest_Salpeter
2. Erwin Schrödinger, see Appendix 1.
3. Karl Friedrich May (1842–1912) was a German author. He is best
known for his travel novels set on one hand in the American Old West
with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand as main protagonists and on the other
hand in the Orient and Middle East with Kara Ben Nemsi and Hadschi
Halef Omar. May also wrote novels set in Latin America and Germany,
poetry, a play, and composed music; he was a profcient player of several
musical instruments. Many of his works were adapted for flm, stage,
audio dramas and comics. Later in his career, May turned to philosophical
and spiritual genres. He is one of the best-selling German writers of all
time, with about 200,000,000 copies worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Karl_May
4. Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November
Pogrom(s), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by SA paramilitary
forces and civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November
1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The
name Kristallnacht (‘Crystal Night’) comes from the shards of broken
glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores,
buildings and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was
the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel
Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris. https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
5. Theresienstadt was a hybrid concentration camp and ghetto
established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town Terezín,
located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (a German-occupied
region of Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served two main purposes: it was
simultaneously a waystation to the extermination camps, and a ‘retirement
settlement’ for elderly and prominent Jews to mislead their communities
about the Final Solution. Its conditions were deliberately engineered to
hasten the death of its prisoners, and the ghetto also served a propaganda
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After all, he reminded himself, he was only carrying out his mother's wishes, and she was dearer to
him than a dozen Georges.

CHAPTER XII
Inez's Vow

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The children were feeling rather tired: were all under the shade
of the big tree on the lawn. They had had their paper-chase, and now Inez was proposing a bonfire
at the end of the garden.

"Old Foster won't like it," said Chris.

"Well, we'll have a fire of some sort. I know! We'll have one in the middle of the grass, and be
gipsies. We'll roast potatoes and boil the kettle for tea."

Inez sprang to her feet as the inspiration seized her.

"I don't believe Mrs. Tubbs will let us," said Diana. "She wouldn't let us have our dinner out here as
we wanted to."

"We won't tell her, and she won't see us till we've done it. Let's pick up all the sticks we can!"

This appealed to them all; even Chris did not see any harm in it, but there was a terrible outcry from
Noel when Inez attempted to break some little branches from his Christmas tree.

He thumped her in the back and yelled.

Inez only laughed.

"His under branches ought to be cut off," she said, "it would do him good. He's got too many of
them."

"Cut your hair off!" cried Noel. "I'll cut some of it, you've got too much of it, and it will burn beautiful."

He picked up the garden shears and pursued her round the garden. Inez enjoyed the chase. They
were all laughing, when suddenly a visitor appeared in their midst. She had walked out of one of the
French windows in the drawing-room and come down the garden to them. It was Miss Constance
Trent.

Noel dropped his shears and rushed at her.

"My Cherub!" she exclaimed as she embraced him. "I was feeling so dull his afternoon that I
suddenly thought I would come and see you all and your mother. I have just been told that she's
away."

In a moment she had sat down amongst them and made herself at home.
"I think I must stay and play with you. Captain Melton has gone back to London, and I've nobody who
wants me."

The children were delighted to have her. She was told about Granny's illness, and about Chris's
invitation.

And then she looked at Chris very thoughtfully for a moment.

"My dear boy," she said in her quick impetuous fashion, "there's no reason why you should not go
and see your school friend and stay the night. Is Nurse away? I'll take her place: it will be great fun.
My little aunt is always telling me I never do anything useful, and I can be a stern martinet when I
choose. I'm sure your mother would like you to go. I'll stay till tea-time, and then I'll come over the
first thing to-morrow morning. You can sleep the night, as you were asked, and come back to-morrow
afternoon. And my car is at the gate with my chauffeur: he'll run you out in no time."

Chris wavered. Then he shook his head and said firmly:

"Thank you very much, but Mums made me her—her deputy, and it would be mean to get someone
else to do my job. I'd rather stay, thank you."

Miss Constance tried to persuade him, but she soon saw it would be useless.

And so she stayed and played with them; and they gave up the idea of having a fire upon the lawn,
because she told them it would burn the grass and leave a bare place. She told them she was going
to marry Captain Melton very soon.

"And when I'm married I mean to have the cherub as my page. Aren't you very glad, Cherub, that I'm
going to marry one of 'God's men'?"

Noel looked at her gravely.

"I don't want him to take you away."

"I don't mean to go back to London, Cherub. We are going to live in the country, not so very far from
here. So I shall come flying along to see you when I'm unhappy."

"Oh!" said Diana, clasping her hands. "You'll never be unhappy if you are married. They always
marry and live happy ever after!"

"So they do—I forgot that—I hope I shall be no exception to the rule."

Miss Constance left them when tea came.

Cassy brought it out into the garden and Diana, with pleased importance, poured out a cup of tea for
Miss Constance and persuaded her to drink it before she went.

"When I grow up," Inez informed them, after they had waved a farewell to their grown-up visitor and
heard her car tear along the road towards her home—"when I grow up, I shall marry and make my
husband take me to the top of the Himalayas. I shan't stay in England, it's too pokey."

"P'r'aps you won't get a husband," said Chris, looking at her critically. "I shouldn't like to be him."

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Because you're always wanting your way, and I should like my wife to want mine."

"I wouldn't have you as a husband for a hundred pounds," said Inez scornfully.
"When I grow up," Diana said softly, "I shall love my husband so much that I'll always do what he
wants, and he'll love me so much that he'll always do what I want."

"And when I grow up," burst out Noel, "I shan't marry nobody, but I shall be a padre and build the
biggest church in the world: that's what I'm going to do, and I'll live in it!"

"Clergymen don't live in churches," said Diana.

"I shall. Samuel in the Bible did, and Eli, and God and me will live there together."

"There you are again!" demonstrated Chris. "That's not the way to speak of God."

"Oh, I like to hear him!" said Inez. "He tells me a lot of things I never heard before."

And after they had had tea, and Chris and Diana began watering their garden, Inez and Noel
wandered off into the churchyard together. It was Noel's favourite haunt.

"I like things that specially belong to God, don't you?" said Noel confidentially. "Old Mr. Sharpe, the
man who keeps the big garden and who gave me my Chris'mas tree, he said that God had always
liked gardens from the very beginning, and this is one of His special little gardens where people
grow."

"But they're dead. They're buried, like my poor little puppy that Julia drowned. I buried him myself,
and made him a little grave just like these."

Noel nodded.

"Yes, I know, but Mr. Wargrave telled me they're like the flowers in the winter time. They'll come out
of the ground one day beautiful!"

Inez looked at him thoughtfully, then she said:

"I've made up my mind to belong to God. I talk a little like you do when I say my prayers. Your mother
told me a lot. Let's come into the church, and I'll tell you what I mean to do."

So as the church door was always left unlocked they found their way in.

"You must whisper," Noel told her; "everybody whispers, except when they're here on Sunday."

They walked up the aisle, and sat down in one of the choir seats in the chancel. The sun was shining
through the coloured window which represented our Lord as the Good Shepherd amongst his flock.
It touched their heads with bars of gold. The church was quiet and cool and restful. Inez was
impressed by the atmosphere.

"Are you positively certain that God is here to-day?" whispered Inez.

"Quite positive certain," said Noel in a shrill, eager whisper. "It's His Own House, you know. Mr.
Wargrave says he leaves the door open for anyone who wants to speak to God."

Then screwing up his eyelids very tightly, Noel added:

"I can almost see Him, Inez."

Inez looked startled.

"Well, listen!" she whispered. "I've been reading about a traveller who stood up in the desert when he
had nearly died, and when a deer crept out from somewhere and showed him a well. The traveller
knew that God had sent the deer to him, and he took off his hat and knelt on the ground and he held
up his hand and he vowed a vow."

"What's that?"

"It's a very solemn, on-your-honour promise. He told God that he would take service with Him for
ever and ever and do what He told him. And he became a very great missionary after that."

"We had missionaries in India," said Noel. "What else?"

"Oh, that's all I need tell you, but I thought I'd rather like to give myself right away to God, and vow a
solemn vow like that."

"Do it now," whispered Noel; "let me see you."

Inez hesitated: "Your mother said it was the Saviour who wanted me."

She pointed to the window.

"There He is! Do you think He'd like me to be one of His sheep?"

"Kneel down and hold up your hand!" urged Noel in an eager whisper.

So Inez knelt down and took off her hat and held up her hand very solemnly.

"Here I vow, O Jesus Christ, to be Your servant and do what You tell me for ever and ever. Amen."

There was silence in the church. Noel was kneeling by her side. He felt as if something tremendous
was taking place.

And he was not far from wrong, for Inez was in dead earnest, and in after-days when she became
quite an old woman with grandchildren of her own around her, she would tell them of the first
stepping-stone towards the Better Land on which she placed her feet, in that quiet little country
church, on a summer's evening in August. And then after silence, Inez spoke to her Saviour again:

"I'm sorry I've been such a wicked girl, but Mrs. Inglefield told me You had died for wicked people to
forgive them, so please forgive me. And make me never want to kick or scratch or bite Julia again."

Then she got up on her feet and looked at Noel in a solemn, satisfied kind of way.

"There, that's done, and I can never go back! I've been wanting to do it ever since the picnic, but I
didn't seem to know how. And when Dad and Mother come home they'll find their daughter an angel-
child, who almost smiles when she's ill-treated, and is almost too good to live! And I shall end my
days by being a missionaryess, out in the heathen countries where lions take you off to their dens."

Noel looked at her admiringly.

"And," went on Inez, as she took his hand and came out of the church into the sunshiny churchyard,
"now you'll never be able to say that the Devil lives in my house any more."

But Noel shook his head doubtfully:

"He comes for visits sometimes—at least, he does to me."

"Well, they'll be very short visits," said Inez with much self-assurance.
And then they ran back to the others, and joined in more games, till it was time for Inez to go. Julia
came for her. Neither she nor Noel told the others about their talk in church, but when Julia said to
her on their way home:

"I hope you've been a good girl. Why you can't always behave like a little lady I can't think!"

Inez quickly rejoined:

"I always behave well with other people who behave well."

Then she added reflectively:

"And now I'm going to be quite a different sort of person. And I'm not going to do what anybody tells
me except God. And I'm going to obey Him all my life long, so you needn't bother about me any
more, Julia."

Julia stared at her in astonishment: then she said sharply:

"The skies will fall when you turn religious!"

Inez would not deign to reply to this, and their walk home was a silent one.

Chris and Diana were delighted the next morning to get a letter from their mother, saying that their
Granny was much better, and that she hoped to be home at the end of the week.

This seemed to them too good to be true.

"Saturday is her birthday," said Diana. "Oh, I do hope she'll come Friday night, so that we'll have
every minute of her birthday with her."

"I must get on with my present for her," said Chris.

"What are you going to give her, Dinah?"

"A hanky with beautiful fine crochet round it. Miss Morgan taught me a long while ago, and I finished
it the other day."

Noel looked rather sorrowful.

"I've fluffing for her birfday, nulling, and I've only sixpence! What can I get her?"

"Go and buy something in the village," said Chris.

"But what shall I buy?"

Chris and Diana turned impatiently from him.

"We've chosen our presents, and you must choose yours," said Diana.

Noel began to cry in a miserable kind of way. He felt very small and helpless sometimes, and thought
the others most unkind.

Cassy found him sitting on the stairs with tears rolling down his cheeks, and took pity on him.

"I'll get aunt to let me come to the village shop with you, and we'll choose together. We're sure to see
something nice."
Noel cheered up. Mrs. Tubbs was willing to spare Cassy, so they started for the shop.

When they got there it seemed most confusing to Noel, for there were so many things and they were
so mixed up together that it was very difficult to choose at all.

Cassy suggested a piece of scented soap, a china vase, a box of hairpins, and a needlebook, but
Noel shook his head at all four.

At last he saw a very brightly coloured plate, with two dancing figures painted upon it. He got this for
sixpence and carried it home triumphantly.

"Mums will be able to eat her tea on it. I know she'll like it."

When he got home he found Chris and Diana talking over decorations, which they meant to put up in
honour of their mother's birthday. They spent all that afternoon in the nursery painting great letters in
red paint, which they pasted on some brown paper. Chris composed the sentence and was very
proud of it:

"Happy health, boundless wealth, and a very long life

to our Mother!"

Then Diana ran out into the garden and let Noel help her pick some green leaves, which she sewed
round the paper as a frame.

After this they got the long steps, and nailed it up at the top of the front porch, so that it should meet
their mother's eyes as soon as she came in.

"But," said Diana as she read it aloud to Noel, "we haven't mentioned her birthday, Chris."

"No, of course not. We can't do that before her birthday comes. This is just for her coming home."

The days seemed to pass slowly. But another letter arrived saying that Mrs. Inglefield would be home
on Friday evening, and Nurse arrived on Friday afternoon. Chris heaved a sigh of relief when he saw
her. He felt his charge was over, and except for the boudoir carpet no harm had been done. On the
whole, things had gone on quietly.

Mrs. Inglefield did not get to the station till six o'clock in the evening. She had ordered the car, and all
three children were in it waiting for her.

When she made her appearance they all flew at her. Chris was not ashamed to hug her before the
porters, and there seemed so much to tell her on the way home that the drive was far too short.

"I seem to have heard all about you from Diana's clever letters," Mrs. Inglefield said, smiling; "but I
find that there is a lot to be told me."

She was delighted with the words over the porch.

"Dear me!" she said. "I am a very proud mother this evening; it's not only the skill that is shown, but
the love behind it that delights me!"

The children spent their happy hour a little later than usual that night. The stains on the carpet told
their tale, but Mrs. Inglefield did not appear to notice them.

When she was visiting Noel in bed, he poured out the whole account to her.
"I've tried hard to be good, Mums. I reely have, and God has tried hard to make me good. But when
you're away I've nobody to love me, and then I feel mis'able—I haven't had one little tiny kiss from
anyone in the world since you went away. Oh, yes, I have. Miss Constance kissed me, but she only
came once."

"My baby!"

Mrs. Inglefield only breathed the words, but she gathered her little son into her arms as only a
mother can, and Noel was deeply content as he lay there.

Then Chris was visited. Mrs. Inglefield had heard about his school friend's invitation, and she spoke
very tenderly to him about it.

"You must go and see him, dear, now, if he is still there. If it is only ten miles, you could cycle over,
could you not? But I like to feel that my boy did not fail me. I shall always rely on you now, Chris. You
are like your father. His word is his bond. He never fails, never disappoints! You might have let Miss
Constance relieve you, as she offered to do so, but I am glad you did not. If anything had happened,
you would not have forgiven yourself. I am pleased with my eldest son, and very proud of him!"

Chris flushed all over. When his mother spoke like that, he felt he could die for her!

Diana clasped her mother round the neck when she came to her.

"Oh, Mums, how I love you!" she whispered. "The house is dreadful without you."

"I think I have missed you, darling, as much as you have missed me. But I wish that my daughter
would show some of her love towards poor little Noel. I think he's the unhappy one of the trio when I
am away."

Diana looked surprised.

"Is he, Mums? He always seems busy and fussing in and out. He's what we call 'all to himself'
always, you know. He doesn't care about being with me."

"Why not, darling? Couldn't you mother him a little? He needs it. He is only a little boy, and has a
very deep, affectionate heart."

"He—he's so huffy!" Diana said in a hesitating way. "Perhaps Chris and I do leave him alone too
much. But he's so silly over that old Christmas tree of his. He talks as if it was alive."

"I do believe it is," said Mrs. Inglefield, laughing.

"Oh, well, Mums—I mean, he treats it as if it could think and hear and see, and then he gets so cross
if we laugh at him."

"Don't laugh at him, and then he won't be cross. Try to sympathize with his ideas. I want my trio to be
a united one—I want you all to love one another."

Diana looked very sober, then she took her mother's hand and laid it under her cheek.

"I'll try and be nice to him," she said earnestly; "but I couldn't mother him. I couldn't be like you,
Mums, if I tried hard all my life. There's nobody like you in the world!"

With which emphatic utterance Mrs. Inglefield could not deal. She kissed her little daughter, and
departed.
 CHAPTER XIII
Their Mother's Birthday

Mrs. Inglefield's birthday dawned very brightly. The birthday presents were given to her before
breakfast, and she expressed herself as peculiarly pleased and satisfied with each.

Then she told her children of the treat that she proposed to give them. She had ordered a car to
come for them all at ten o'clock, and they were going to drive away to the sea, which was just twenty
miles away.

"It is a big car and we have room for Inez. Could you go and fetch her, Chris?"

Chris willingly consented. All the children were enchanted at the idea of going to the sea. But before
Chris had started from the house, Inez appeared, almost hidden by the most enormous bouquet of
flowers, which she carried with both hands.

"It's for you," she said, flying into Mrs. Inglefield's arms; "and I wish you many, many happy returns of
your birthday. I picked every flower I could get in the garden, and I wish I could have carried more. I
brought as many as I could hold."

Mrs. Inglefield expressed her gratitude and then told Inez of their intended outing. Inez of course was
only too glad to be included, and Chris rode off on his cycle to tell Julia not to expect her home till the
end of the day.

"You'll find Julia rather waxy," Inez said to Chris, "because she tried to prevent me picking some of
the flowers in the greenhouse, so I pushed her into a potting-shed, and locked her in, and went on
picking my flowers until I remembered something, so then I unlocked her in a hurry, and begged her
pardon, and flew like the wind away from her with my flowers, and she started to chase me, and then
she stopped, for she saw it was no good."

Mrs. Inglefield shook her head at Inez.

"I'm afraid I shan't like to look at these orchids, for they are forbidden spoils."

"Oh no, not really. It's only Julia. And she says herself she doesn't know what has come to me, for
I'm so good. And she wasn't locked in more than two minutes—you see I forgot until I remembered.
And I don't expect you know what I'm talking about, but I'll tell you when we're quite alone."

"I know!" said Noel, nodding his head importantly.

Mrs. Inglefield looked from one to the other with puzzled eyes, but she did not ask to be enlightened,
and there was so much bustle and confusion getting ready for the expedition that there was no
chance of any quiet talk.

They all packed themselves away in an open car, and had the most glorious two hours' drive,
through woods and by the river's side, up and down hill, and then through a beautiful green valley
down to the sea. It was rather a lovely little bay, with a few fishers' cottages standing on the green
sloping cliffs above it. Very few people were on the beach. The tide was out, and there was a great
stretch of golden sand with brown rocks, and delicious pools fringed with seaweed and sea
anemones.

Mrs. Inglefield had a big luncheon-basket in the car, and the children were quite ready for their open-
air meal.

Afterwards they played on the sands and waded into the sea, and Mrs. Inglefield sat amongst the
rocks, watching them and reading a book by turns.

Presently Inez crept up to her.

"May I sit here and talk with you? Do you remember you said to me that I could get joined to God if I
wanted to, and you told me about Jesus Christ loving me. That was on the day of our other picnic.
Well, I thought and thought, and when you were away Noel and I managed it together. We went into
the church and I made a vow. I told Jesus I would serve Him for ever and ever and do what He told
me. And I went home and thought I was going to be exactly like an angel, but it didn't turn out as I
thought. The next day I began all right; but in the afternoon Julia provoked me and I got mad and
wild, until I remembered —and it was of a sudden—just like God laying His hand on my shoulder. I
stopped, and Julia thought I was going to have a fit, and I went away to my room, and cried, for it all
seemed no use. And then I thought I'd talk to God like Noel does, instead of saying prayers. And He
seemed to forgive and comfort me. But I haven't been turned from a wicked child into a good child all
at once."

"No, darling, of course not," said Mrs. Inglefield gently; "and you never will be. It will be always a fight
to the end between good and evil. It isn't easy to be good with any of us, but it is possible with God's
help and strength. Pray to Him, and you will find the oftener you pray the more you will remember. It
is forgetfulness that makes us sin, isn't it?"

Inez listened with eager face. And then, child-like, she dashed away in a moment or two to join the
others in their play.

It was late in the evening before they returned home, and they were all a little tired though very
happy. There had been no quarrels and nothing to mar the enjoyment of Mrs. Inglefield's birthday
treat.

As Noel was getting into bed he said to Nurse: "I s'pose birfdays are the happiest days in the year,
aren't they?"

"I think they are, for children," said Nurse. "Some older people find them rather sad."

"Does Jesus Christ find His birfday sad?" Noel asked quickly.

It was one of Noel's questions that Nurse could not answer.

He went on:

"I'm sure He doesn't, because everybody in the world is happy on Chris'mas Day and that's His
birfday, and He likes to see us happy, doesn't He?"

"Yes," said Nurse.

"And the next birfday in our family will be His birfday and mine," said Noel with intense satisfaction in
his tone.

A few days after, Chris had the joy of seeing his school chum. He called in a car in the morning and
took Chris off to spend a long day with him. And Chris enjoyed it all the more, because of his
previous disappointment.

The holidays slipped away very fast, and soon school and lessons began again.

The next event was Miss Constance's wedding in London. Noel went up to it, as he was to be her
page; and as Mrs. Inglefield was asked, too, she took Diana up as well, and they all stayed with
Granny for the occasion.

Granny rather wondered at Noel's being asked to the wedding.

"I should have thought Diana would have made a pretty little bridesmaid. Why did she fix upon him?"

"She took a great liking to him," said Mrs. Inglefield. "Do you think that strange?"

"I suppose," said Granny, "that I know the other two best. They have lived with me and he hasn't. I
still consider him a spoilt bit of goods."

"Oh no," remonstrated his mother: "I don't think I have spoilt him. He gets on better with his brother
and sister now. Don't you notice it?"

"I notice that Diana's will gives way first," said Granny.

The wedding took place, and was a very pretty one. Noel's behaviour was perfect, but he always was
good in a church, and the big London church with all its floral decorations and crowds of people
awed him. When he returned home, his granny called him to her, and began to question him about it.

He described it all eagerly to her.

"Miss Constance was all in white. She looked like an angel, and God's man was smiling all over his
face. She kissed me and he kissed me."

"Who do you mean by 'God's man'? The clergyman?"

"No. God sent him to get Inez and me out of the room—we asked God to send somebody and God
sent him."

This needed explanation, and Noel gave it in his funny quaint way.

Granny told his mother afterwards that he was too religious for a child.

"No," said Mrs. Inglefield gravely. "His faith is real and big. I wish I had as much."

Before the children left Granny to return home, she presented them each with five shillings.

"What will you do with it?" she asked them.

"I shall spend mine on a little—just a little present for Chris," said Diana. "He collects stamps at
school, and I'm going to buy some for him. The rest I shall spend on a big fat book of lined paper for
my stories. I want to write a real long story, and I'm always short of paper."

"And what is Noel going to do with his?"

Noel looked up with shining eyes.

"I'm going to buy presents for my Chris'mas tree," he said; "and I'll begin doing it now, so as to get
ready in time, and I'll show them to him. He's very dull and lonely, and thinks he's no good to nobody.
It will cheer him up."

"Who do you mean?"

"Oh," said Diana, laughing, "he means his Christmas tree; he's just mad about it. He talks as if it can
feel and think."

"Hans Andersen's book says they do fink," said Noel eagerly; "and, Granny, he's having such a dull
time in our garden! Him and me long every day for Chris'mas to come."

Granny laughed at him; and then she laid her delicate old hand on his curly head.

"Lots of people have a very dull time and even Christmas brings no change to them," she said.
"When you get old, it ceases to amuse you."

"But it's a birfday," cried Noel; "it's my biggest, wonder-fullest day in the year, and it's Jesus Christ's
birfday, Granny."

"Yes; so it is."

Granny gave a little sigh, and sent them away from her; but when Mrs. Inglefield came to wish her
good-bye, she said to her:

"I pitied you for your dull life in the country, but I find that I am having the dull time now. I suppose I
miss the children. They do keep one amused."

"Come and stay with us," begged Mrs. Inglefield; but Granny shook her head.

"No, I'll live through my days. If I get very hipped, you can send me one of the chicks for a week or
two. I am getting too old to move about, and most of my friends are in town—"

So Diana and Noel came back to their lessons, and autumn set in. The flowers in the garden faded;
the leaves came flying down from the trees; and soon Noel's garden was the only one that had a
good show of green in it.

One afternoon Inez came flying over in the greatest excitement. Her parents had returned very
suddenly from abroad, and had taken her by surprise by arriving very late on the previous evening.

"And Mother has been talking to me this morning. I'm going to school directly after Christmas, and
I'm glad of it. I'm tired, very tired of Julia."

"But I hoped you were getting on better with her lately!" said Mrs. Inglefield.

"Oh yes. I don't bite or kick or scratch her any more. We've made an agreement that we don't take
hold of each other at all. She has left off grabbing at me, and if she scolds, I back away from her as
fast as I can, so as not to tempt her to touch me. It's when she snatches hold of me that I get angry.
But of course a proper Christian girl wouldn't get angry if they were snatched and shaken to pieces.
I'm hardly a Christian at all yet. But perhaps I shall be better at school."

"How lovely to have your father and mother both home together," said Diana.

But Inez did not seem very joyful over the arrivals.

"Father thinks I'm too lanky, and mother says my fingernails are shocking! They're going hunting to-
morrow. I wish they'd take me, but they won't. They're going to stay till Christmas. I shall have three
people to please and to obey now. It's dreadfully difficult for me. May I stay to tea? Nobody wants me
at home, and I told Julia I would try and stay here as long as I could."

"We shall be very glad to have you, dear," said Mrs. Inglefield; "if you are sure that your mother
would like you to be here."

"Mother is lying down till tea, and Father is in the stables; he's going round the gardens afterwards.
He says everybody has been neglecting everything, and he must wake them up. He'll make things
hum now he's home again!"

"Is Daddy like that?" Diana asked her mother.

But Mrs. Inglefield would not answer. Noel and Diana were going for their walk with Miss Morgan,
and she told Inez that she had better go with them.

Inez was delighted to do so. She and Diana walked on in front together and Diana resumed her
wonderful, never-ending story about "Ada and Gertrude," whose adventures thrilled Inez through and
through.

Noel walked with Miss Morgan. He rather preferred a talk and a walk with a grown-up person. They
were delighted when Miss Morgan suggested going to Mr. Sharpe's nursery gardens, as she wanted
to take home a plant to her mother.

Bessie, the daughter, received them with a grave face.

"Dad is ill. Been in bed for six weeks with rheumatic fever. But his foreman will do what you want. I'll
call him."

Miss Morgan expressed her sympathy for old Mr. Sharpe; then she and the little girls followed the
foreman through the gardens to the glasshouses. But Noel begged to see Mr. Sharpe. He was
devoted to him, and after Bessie had been upstairs, she came down saying:

"Dad would dearly like to see you, Master Noel. He's quite comfortable this afternoon; he's on the
mend, I hope, but the doctor says he'll never work in his garden again; and if he knew it, I believe it
would fair break his heart."

Noel went up the narrow stairs on tiptoe, then found himself in a big comfortable-looking bedroom.

Upon a large bed drawn close to the window, lay old Mr. Sharpe. His face looked thin and worn with
suffering, but he greeted Noel with his cheery smile.

"Hulloo, little Master Christmas, how are you? And how's the little tree?"

"I'm very well, and so's my tree. Only think, Mr. Sharpe, it will be not three months to Chris'mas! I'm
counting up every week. I fink my Chris'mas tree is a little happier now. You see, he didn't much like
it when all the flowers were out smelling so beautiful and looking so pretty! I raver fink they weren't
very nice to him, and he felt ugly, and no use to anybody. Chris and Diana would point their fingers at
him and say that he looked higeous and was only taking up room, and doing nothing at all. 'He
doesn't even smell,' they said; but I like his smell, 'specially after rain, and he's been growing green
tips all over him. Now he knows he hasn't much more time to wait, and then he'll come into his glory."

"Come into his glory," repeated Mr. Sharpe, looking at Noel with a wistful smile; "do you know, little
master, I've been lying here in much pain and trouble, and then I've taken to think over my plants,
and I've learnt a lot of rare lessons from them. My days of work and usefulness are over—I'm in a
bed now doing nothing, and shall do nothing for a long time to come. My hands and feet are that
twisted that I doubt if they'll ever come straight again. My Bessie, she thinks I don't know, but I do—I
know I'm going to be a bedridden cripple for the rest of my life—"

"Oh! Mr. Sharpe," cried Noel, "but God will make you well again. We'll ask Him to do it at once."

"Ay, ay, He could if He would. I've prayed quick and hasty-like, but now I tell the good Lord that He
must have His will with me, and I'll be content. I've just got transplanted into a quiet bed by myself;
and, like your little tree, I'm a useless hulk to some eyes, doing no good to no one. That will be my
fate in the future. But my Gardener and Master has put me here, and I'm to wait till I'm called into my
glory. My Christmas will come by and by, when I shall be taken up and carried into the king's palace.
I shall see there what I was meant for."

Noel did not follow all this, but he caught the idea.

"You mean that people can be like Chris'mas trees, and have a very lonely, dull time, and then God
takes them and lights them up in heaven and covers them with glory. That's what I shall do to my
tree. I shall cover him with glory."

"Yes, we shall be 'covered with glory,'" said Mr. Sharpe, his eyes shining with a strange light. "What
does it matter if we lie in bed or work in our garden? We have only to do what our Master tells us.
And we shan't have to wait too long. We have such a happy life coming."

"And you're like my tree. You're just waiting," said Noel.

Then he began to tell the old man of all the presents that he had bought for his tree with his granny's
money.

"And Ted is making me some frogs, and Mums is going to help, and I'm going to ask everybody I
know to come to it. And Chris and Diana won't laugh at him any more then."

Bessie came in at this juncture. She was afraid her father would be tired.

"The little gentleman has done me good," said the old man happily. "We have been reminding each
other of our good time coming."

Then he turned to Noel.

"There be many who would do well to be like your fir tree. Be quiet and content in a dull life and go
on quietly growing and waiting. Such souls may grow faster than some of the busy workers. Good-
bye, little laddie, and come again and see the old man if you can."

"I'll tell Mums, and she'll come, too," said Noel, clattering down the stairs.

He joined the others with rather a sober face, and tried to repeat to Miss Morgan what the old man
had said to him. But she did not seem to understand so well as his mother, and when he told her all
about it, she exclaimed:

"Dear old man! I suppose his time is coming, and God wants him to lie still and think about it. I shall
go and see him to-morrow."

"And he's just like my Chris'mas tree," said Noel, summing up the whole in his usual slow, deliberate
way.
 CHAPTER XIV
The Glory of the Tree

It was the day before Christmas Eve.

Though the time had gone slowly to Noel, Christmas had come at last.

The house was full of the chatter of the children. Chris had come home from school the previous
evening, and he was in the best of spirits, for he was head of his form, and his report was a very
good one.

It seemed as if it were going to be a real old-fashioned Christmas. There was hard frost and bright
sun.

Directly after breakfast Mrs. Inglefield suggested that they should all go to the woods, and bring
home some evergreens and holly.

"Take the wheelbarrow. General Herbert said you could cut as much as you like in the nearest wood.
I dare say you will find Mr. Wargrave and his helpers there getting some green for decorating the
church. I wish I could come with you, but I am too busy."

"Oh, Mums, when, when shall my tree be brought in?" Noel was in such a state of excitement that he
could hardly contain himself.

"This afternoon, darling. You must wait till then. I have asked Foster to come round and dig it up."

A few moments later and the three children were out on the hard, frosty road wheeling their barrow
along and talking hard as they went.

"Inez is going to have a party," Diana told Chris; "her father and mother have let her ask who she
likes. I wouldn't have them for my father and mother for worlds! They never go about with her or have
her with them, but Inez says they're nicer to her than they used to be. I think she isn't so
disagreeable herself. She's going to have a conjurer at her party. It will be like our London parties,
Chris. It is going to be on New Year's Eve, and we are all asked, and Ted is asked, too, and he's so
much better that he can sit up now, and stand on his feet sometimes."

"But Inez's party won't be as good as mine," burst out Noel; "mine is going to be to-morrow night,
and everybody is coming to it."

"Oh, we've heard of nothing but your Christmas tree for ever so long," said Diana a little impatiently.
"Fancy, Chris! He has asked nearly all the village children, and Foster's little boy, and the baker's
little girls, and ever so many people that he speaks to, and whom we don't know at all."

"I know them," said Noel stoutly.

"I hope you'll have presents for them all," said Chris.

Noel looked a little anxious.

"Mums says we shall, and I've bought ever so many with Granny's money."
"He keeps them hidden away in a box under his bed," said Diana.

"Yes," nodded Noel, "Mums and me are going to do it ourselves in secret."

He began to caper up and down. Diana tried to sober him.

"Nurse says you'll be ill of excitement if you don't take care. She said to Mrs. Tubbs that she knew a
boy who got so excited that he had fits."

"What are fits?" asked Noel.

"You fall down and bite your tongue in half, and go black in the face!" said Chris cheerfully. "A chap
at school did that once, and he had to be sent home for good."

But nothing could damp Noel's spirits.

When they came to the wood, they found others before them there. Mr. Wargrave had half a dozen
of his choir-boys, and they were all as busy as they could be.

Noel was very interested in the decoration of the church. He asked Mr. Wargrave if he could help in
it, and before he returned home he went into the church with the young vicar.

"It's for Jesus' birfday, isn't it? He'll like His house to look pretty."

"Yes," answered Mr. Wargrave. "I don't believe in decorating our own houses, and leaving God's
house untouched."

Noel stood looking at the holly and evergreens which had been put together in a heap at the bottom
of the church.

And then a gardener appeared with some white flowers from the Hall. Lady Alice had sent them. The
vicar received them with much pleasure.

"I wish," said Noel, "that I could give something of my own to Jesus for His birfday. He likes things
that grow, doesn't He?"

Then an idea struck him, and he darted away through the churchyard gate into their own garden.
There he found Foster sweeping up the leaves on the paths.

"Thought I'd come a bit earlier and tidy-up for Christmas. I'm a-goin' to dig up your tree, Master Noel,
this afternoon."

Noel did not hear him. He was standing in front of his tree talking to it earnestly:

"Your grand day is nearly here, you know, and very soon you'll be the most important person in the
house, but I reely fink a part of you must be a birfday present to Jesus. You'd like to be right in God's
house, wouldn't you? Just a bit of you, it's only like having your hair cut. It won't reely hurt you."

Then he called out to Foster to come and help him. But when Foster heard that he wanted to cut off
one of the branches, he shook his head.

"Don't 'ee do it, Master Noel, 'twill spoil the look of it. You wouldn't go for making it just a guy, when
it's grown so nice all round."

"It's to go into the church," said Noel firmly. "Mr. Wargrave is putting all the nicest holly and flowers
there, and my Chris'mas tree would like to be there, too. Not the whole of him, only a bit."
So after some further discussion a branch was cut off, and Noel bore it into the church with a mixture
of reverence and pride in his heart.

If it had been a casket of gold or of precious stones, it could not have been given into the vicar's
hands with more solemnity of purpose.

"It's my darling tree. He wants a bit of himself to be in church. It's a present for Jesus."

And Mr. Wargrave understood in a moment, and though there was a murmur amongst his helpers,
"Not that ugly old branch," he hushed them at once, and with his own hands arranged the branch in
the middle of the pulpit.

Noel looked at it there with a smile all over his face, and then he trotted home to his dinner, but never
said a single word to anyone of what he had done.

The event of that day was the carrying of the fir tree into the house. It was dug up carefully, and then
put into a big pot, Noel watching the process throughout with big anxious eyes. The drawing-room
had been emptied of its furniture, and Mrs. Inglefield and Noel were the only ones allowed to go
inside.

It was enough to make any small boy feel important, for he and his mother were going to trim the
tree themselves, and it took a long time to do it. Only a very little was done on this afternoon, and
then the room was locked up until the next day.

Mrs. Inglefield had noticed that a branch was missing, and Noel's explanation had brought a smile to
her face.

"A very nice thought, my boy. We shall like to see it in church on Christmas Day."

There seemed so much to do that day that time flew. The children put holly and ivy and mistletoe all
over the house, even twining it round the banisters of the staircase.

When Christmas Eve came, Chris and Diana went up to the nursery to get their presents ready for
Noel, and their mother and the servants. Noel went into the drawing-room with his mother, and was
not seen for the whole morning. When he appeared at dinner, he said triumphantly:

"It is finished, and it looks glorious!"

But when Noel was not looking Mrs. Inglefield slipped into the room and put a few finishing touches
to the tree. At half-past four the children were receiving their guests.

There was a big tea laid out in the nursery. The Vicar, Ted and Inez were the chief guests. But just
before they sat down Miss Constance and her husband appeared. They had driven over in a car
from their house, which was twenty-five miles away, but Noel had written in his own handwriting
asking them to come, and they did not disappoint him.

Then Tom Thorn, his wife, and little boy arrived, the postman, the baker, who was a widower, brought
his three little girls, and there were about a dozen other children, eight of them choir-boys.

Altogether there were thirty guests, including the three children. Noel felt he was master of the
ceremonies, but to his brother's and sister's surprise, he suddenly turned shy. And during tea, he
spoke to nobody. His excitement was so great that he could hardly eat, and it left him speechless.

Mrs. Inglefield called Mr. Wargrave out of the room directly after tea. They were going to light up the
tree, but Noel's quick eyes spied them and he slipped out after them.
"I must see it all, Mums, from the very beginning," he said.

It was a magnificent tree. To Noel it seemed the most wonderful sight he had seen in his life, and
when the candles were ablaze, and it glittered and shone through all its frosted tinsel and finery, he
simply stood still gazing at it with open eyes and mouth.

"It's as good, better, much better than the picture books, Mums," he gasped. "Why, it is good enough
to be in heaven!"

"Run and bring your guests in," said his mother, smiling. "We want them to get all the good of the
candles when they are lighted."

So Noel ran upstairs, and down trooped the merry throng. Soon Mrs. Inglefield and the vicar were
cutting the presents off the tree. Every one had been provided for, and Noel trotted round and round,
giving all of them their gifts.

Mrs. Inglefield made a little speech.

"This is entirely my little boy's idea," she said; "he bought the tree early last spring, and has taken the
greatest care of it ever since. And a great many of the presents have been bought with his own
money. We wish you a very happy Christmas, and hope that you will enjoy it with all your hearts."

Then all the children clapped vociferously.

"Well," said Noel, going up to Chris and Diana, who were in one corner together, "what do you think
of my Chris'mas tree now?"

It was the only bit of triumph he showed that evening. Chris and Diana meekly said:

"It's one of the best Christmas trees we have ever seen."

And every one agreed with them.

Chris received a box of fretwork tools, Diana a beautiful leather manuscript book with clasps, and
Noel, to his surprise, a big paint-box. These, they discovered, were given to them by Miss
Constance. Their mother's presents were kept till Christmas Day.

The only sad part of the evening to Noel was when the candles were put out, and the tree stood
there stripped of most of its finery and looking very forlorn. He lingered on in the room after the
others had left it.

His mother understood the wistful look in his eyes.

"We must let him rest here all to-morrow, darling," she said, "and then the next day Foster will take
him out into the garden, and put him back into his own corner. He will be quite happy there, and we'll
hope that next Christmas, he may give us this pleasure again. I expect he will be much bigger then."

Noel brightened up a little.

"I wish he could have stayed lighted up for ever. Don't you think he was much more beautiful than
Hans Andersen's tree, Mums?"

"I daresay he was," said his mother, laughing. "Now run along, I am going to lock this room up
again."

"Well, Cherub," said Miss Constance to Noel as she was wishing him good-bye, "has this quite come
up to your expectations? I have never come across a small boy before who grew his own Christmas
tree. I think it quite a good idea. Perhaps I had better start doing it. What do you think? Anyhow,
you've managed to give us all a lot of pleasure. I really don't see that you'll have any left for
Christmas Day, we have had it all beforehand."

"But to-morrow is my birfday," said Noel; "and it's Jesus Christ's birfday too. That's the enormous day
to me."

"Is it? I thought the tree was the biggest thing in your life."

Noel pondered.

"So it is," he said, "but it's only because it belongs to it."

Miss Constance laughed, then she said:

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to get over to your church to-morrow. I must go to my own, so I wish you
now, darling Cherub, very many happy returns of your birthday. I'm sure you'll have a happy day. I
envy you."

She embraced him, with a smile on her lips and a sigh in her heart.

"One ought to be a child at Christmas time!"

Inez left the party very reluctantly.

"I wish I could spend Christmas Day here," she said to Ted, who was sitting in his chair in the hall
waiting to be wheeled away by his brother.

"Oh, that wouldn't do at all," Ted said cheerfully: "Christmas is a family day. We all like to be in our
own homes then. I know I do, though we aren't many in family."

"I shall spend it in the nursery with Julia. Father and mother are dining out, and if I go down to lunch
with them, I shan't be able to talk—they always do the talking, and if I join in, they tell me to be quiet.
Julia is always her crossest when she has to look after me, and she knows a good time is going on in
the kitchen. The kitchen doesn't want me, and the drawing-room doesn't want me, so there I am!"

"Poor little lonely soul!" said Ted, laughing. "Now from the look of you I should say you could make
yourself happy anywhere! Would you like to come to tea with us? Ask permission and come along.
There's a carol service at four o'clock, but it doesn't last an hour. Come to that."

Inez's eyes brightened.

"I hope I haven't asked myself to tea," she said; "and I didn't mean to grumble, because when I'm
alone I think about going to school, and that cheers me up. Will Mr. Wargrave like to see me?"

"Very much, I know."

Inez went home with a happy heart. And she had the surprise of her life the next morning, when a
beautiful little gold watch lay upon her plate on the breakfast-table, a gift to her from her father and
mother.

Even Julia had remembered her, and presented her with a big box of chocolates.

Christmas Day had begun well. She went to church with her father and mother, and lunch was a
much more cheerful meal than usual. She had permission to go out to tea, and thoroughly enjoyed
herself at the Vicarage. Ted had presented her with a little carved bookcase of his own making, with
which she was delighted.
"This is a very happy Christmas to me," he said to her as they were wishing each other good-bye,
"for I believe I shall be back at school very soon. It's the end of my invalid stunt."

"I'm sorry you're going to school. Will you never make any more of those wonderful little wooden
toys?"

"I was going to say I hope not, but I dare say I may while away my time in the holidays. Oh, Inez, if
you only knew how I've longed to be on my feet again! Now it has come, it seems too good to be
true."

"If you go to school and I go to school, Diana and Noel won't have anybody left to play with."

"That won't trouble them. Diana will be wrapped up in her stories, and Noel will have his Christmas
tree. What a funny kid he is."

"Yes, he kept saying last night, 'How pleased my tree must be!' He thought more of the tree than of
the presents! But I like Noel, he's helped me."

"Yes," said Ted; "I know he has."

"How do you know he has?"

"Oh, you're different, not quite so harum-scarum, and I saw you sloping off to church one day and I
guessed, because he talks to me sometimes, and I always feel as if he's pretty near heaven."

"'Cherub' is a very good name for him," said Inez.

And Ted agreed with her.

CHAPTER XV
To the Borderland and Back

Christmas morning at Wistaria Cottage was a very merry one.

Long before light the children were examining their Christmas stockings, which were bulging with all
kinds of presents from every one. Of course Noel's was the biggest; and there beside his bed was a
bicycle, just like Chris's, only smaller. He was in transports of delight, and tried to get on it and go up
and down the passage, but Nurse quickly put a stop to that. They all trooped down to their mother's
room in their dressing-gowns and presented her with a beautiful picture representing the Manger at
Bethlehem.

"It's from all three of us," said Chris. "We thought you'd like to hang it up over your bed."

And Mrs. Inglefield said she would love to do that, and that they could not have given her anything
which she would have liked better.

Then they were called away by Nurse, and dressing and breakfast followed.
They all went to church, Noel much interested in the branch of his tree, which formed the centre of a
group of evergreens on the front panel of the pulpit. When they came out he said to his mother:

"I'm sure Jesus must be enjoying His birfday, isn't He, Mums? And Nurse told me every church all
over the world has music and singing and decorations to-day, and it's all for Him."

Mrs. Inglefield squeezed the little hand in hers.

"Yes, Noel, and what will please our Saviour most will be the grateful thanks and hearts of His people
everywhere."

Before they sat down to the Christmas dinner, Noel had coaxed his mother to let him go into the
drawing-room to see his tree. She let him go and he remained there for quite a quarter of an hour.
He looked a little happier when he came out. It was the only shadow so far on his birthday, the
thought that the glory of his tree was over.

"I fink he'll be comf'able when he gets back into my garden," he said to his mother. "He won't be up in
the garret with the mice like Hans's tree."

"You must look forward to having him another Christmas," his mother said cheerfully.

In the afternoon they went to the Carol Service. Noel had never heard carols before, and when they
sang:

"Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,

Born is the King of Israel."

He thought they were singing it to him.

Coming home afterwards, Chris and Diana soon undeceived him.

"They did sing a hymn about me," Noel said obstinately.

"It means Christmas; Noel is the French for Christmas, isn't it, Mums?" said Diana.

"You always think that everybody is thinking about you," Chris said.

"Hush, Chris! Remember it is Noel's birthday. Be kind."

And then Mrs. Inglefield explained that carols were very ancient, and that many words that were
spoken at that time have now entirely been changed or forgotten.

Noel was a little crestfallen.

"I thought they might know it was my birfday," he said.

Chris and Diana laughed at him, but said no more.

They were all going to have tea downstairs with their mother. Noel was having his hair brushed and
his hands and face washed by Nurse when he heard Chris laughing rather loudly in the hall.

He rushed out to the stairs and hung his head and shoulders over the banister rail to see what was
going on.