“No Euclid,” I replied.
“Don’t know any Euclid? Why, how old are you?”
“Nearly fifteen,” I replied.
“Oh I nearly fifteen and don’t know any Euclid! and you’re going to be an engineer?”
“Yes,” I replied; “I’m going to be an engineer.”
“Don’t you wish you may get it?” said Mr Monk. “Now learn these definitions,” he continued, “and let’s see what you can do.”
The book now placed before me was the mysterious Euclid, my first acquaintance with which I was now to make. I looked at the first sentence under the definitions, and thought I had never seen a more extraordinary statement than that there made,—
“A point is that which has no parts and no magnitude.”
I read this over two or three times, but each time I read it and thought over it the statement seemed more and more curious. On looking further down the page, I saw that “a line was length without breadth,” which seemed to me quite a mistake; for, however thin a line might appear to the naked eye, yet I knew, from my experience with the microscope in connexion with natural history, that the thinnest spider’s web always showed some breadth when it was looked at through a microscope. It occurred to me that, amidst the noise and confusion that went on in this school, it was possible that the fact of looking at a line through a microscope had never been thought of by any one; and as I felt quite certain that it was impossible that a line could exist without breadth, I determined to point this out to Mr Monk.
Watching for an opportunity to catch his eye, I half rose from my seat as I saw him looking at me. He immediately came to where I was sitting, and said,—