'
"`Science!' cried the stranger. `There is only one good thing
science ever discovered--a good thing, good tidings of great joy--
that the world is round.'
"I told him with civility that his words conveyed no impression
to my intelligence. `I mean,' he said, `that going right round
the world is the shortest way to where you are already.'
"`Is it not even shorter,' I asked, `to stop where you are?'
"`No, no, no!' he cried emphatically. `That way is long and very weary.
At the end of the world, at the back of the dawn, I shall find
the wife I really married and the house that is really mine.
And that house will have a greener lamp-post and a redder pillar-box.
Do you,' he asked with a sudden intensity, `do you never want to rush
out of your house in order to find it?'
"`No, I think not,' I replied; `reason tells a man from
the first to adapt his desires to the probable supply of life.
I remain here, content to fulfil the life of man.
All my interests are here, and most of my friends, and--'
"`And yet,' he cried, starting to his almost terrific height,
`you made the French Revolution!'
"`Pardon me,' I said, `I am not quite so elderly.
A relative perhaps.'
"`I mean your sort did!' exclaimed this personage.
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