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"Of course if
I am needed, there is an end of the matter.
But
the engagement was
important and intimate. If I could be
spared----"
"Well, I
don't see that you can."
It was bitter, but
I had to put the best face I could upon it.
After all, it was
my own fault, for I should have known by this
time that a
journalist has no right to make plans of his own.
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"Then I'll
think no more of it," said I with as much
cheerfulness as I
could assume at so short a notice.
"What was
it that you wanted
me to do?"
"Well, it was
just to interview that deevil of a man down at
Rotherfield."
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"You don't
mean Professor Challenger?" I cried.
"Aye, it's
just him that I do mean. He ran young
Alec Simpson of
the Courier a mile
down the high road last week by the collar
of his coat and
the slack of his breeches. You'll have
read of
it, likely, in the
police report. Our boys would as soon
interview a loose
alligator in the zoo. But you could do
it,
I'm thinking--an
old friend like you."
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"Why,"
said I, greatly relieved, "this makes it all easy. It so
happens that it
was to visit Professor Challenger at Rotherfield
that I was asking
for leave of absence. The fact is, that
it is
the anniversary of
our main adventure on the plateau three years
ago, and he has
asked our whole party down to his house to see
him and celebrate
the occasion."
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"Capital!"
cried McArdle, rubbing his hands and beaming through
his glasses. "Then you will be able to get his
opeenions out of
him. In any other man I would say it was all
moonshine, but the
fellow has made
good once, and who knows but he may again!"
"Get what out
of him?" I asked. "What has he
been doing?"
"Haven't you
seen his letter on `Scientific Possibeelities' in
to-day's
Times?"
"No." ashley
furniture
McArdle dived down
and picked a copy from the floor.
"Read it
aloud," said he, indicating a column with his finger.
"I'd be glad
to hear it again, for I am not sure now that I have
the man's meaning
clear in my head."
This was the
letter which I read to the news editor of the
Gazette:--
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"Sir,--I have
read with amusement, not wholly unmixed with some
less complimentary
emotion, the complacent and wholly fatuous
letter of James
Wilson MacPhail which has lately appeared in
your columns upon
the subject of the blurring of Fraunhofer's
lines in the
spectra both of the planets and of the fixed stars.
He dismisses the
matter as of no significance. To a wider
intelligence it
may
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well seem of very great possible
importance--so
great as to involve the ultimate welfare of every
man, woman, and
child upon this planet. I can hardly
hope, by
the use of
scientific language, to convey any sense of my
meaning to those
ineffectual people who gather their ideas from
the columns of a
daily newspaper. I will endeavour,
therefore,
to condescend to
their limitation and to indicate the situation
by the use of a
homely analogy which will be within the limits
of the
intelligence of your readers." ashley furniture
"Man, he's a
wonder--a living wonder!" said McArdle, shaking his
head
reflectively. "He'd put up the
feathers of a sucking-dove
and set up a riot
in a Quakers' meeting. No wonder he has
made
grand brain! We'll let's have the analogy."
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"We will
suppose," I read, "that a small bundle of connected
corks was launched
in a sluggish current upon a voyage across
the
same conditions
all round them. If the corks were
sentient we
could imagine that
they would consider these conditions to be
permanent and
assured. But we, with our superior
knowledge, know
that many things
might happen to surprise the corks. They
might
possibly float up
against a ship, or a sleeping whale, or become
entangled in
seaweed. In any case, their voyage would
probably
end by their being
thrown up on the rocky coast of Labrador.
But
what could they
know of all this while they drifted so gently day
by day in what they
thought was a limitless and homogeneous
ocean? ashley
furniture
"Your readers
will possibly comprehend that the Atlantic, in this
parable, stands
for the mighty ocean of ether through which we
drift and that the
bunch of corks represents the little and
obscure planetary
system to which we belong. A third-rate
sun,
with its rag tag and
bobtail of insignificant satellites, we
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