"Sure about what?"
"That there is not a fellow in all Britannula will have such a wife as Eva."
"That means that you are in love. And because you are in love, you are to throw over—not merely your father, because in such an affair that goes for nothing—"
"Oh, but it does; I have thought so much about it."
"I'm much obliged to you. But you are to put yourself in opposition to the greatest movement made on behalf of the human race for centuries; you are to set yourself up against—"
"Galileo and Columbus," he suggested, quoting my words with great cruelty.
"The modern Galileo, sir; the Columbus of this age. And you are to conquer them! I, the father, have to submit to you the son; I the President of fifty-seven, to you the schoolboy of twenty-one; I the thoughtful man, to you the thoughtless boy! I congratulate you; but I do not congratulate the world on the extreme folly which still guides its actions." Then I left him, and going into the executive chambers, sat myself down and cried in the very agony of a broken heart.