“But he is only a few miles away from us at this minute. I want you to stop off with me and get acquainted with him.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Mr. Ferry, I’m guessing that you will. He has the mistaken notion that you are a coward. What’s the sense in letting that notion continue when you might dispel it in five minutes? You are the master of thirty thousand workmen who have never been able to form a union, and yet you hesitate to face a man who has much the same ideals as yours.”
“Marvin, let’s drop that subject. Come up here in the bow of the boat, out of the wind, and talk to me about solar energy.”
They walked up the deck and seated themselves near the lookout.
“Now, this here process by which a leaf extracts the energy out of the sun. Can’t that be duplicated in a laboratory?”
“Possibly, some day, but it amounts to discovering the secret of life. To get even within speaking distance of that problem there would have to be long co-operation between botany and physiology and organic chemistry and radiochemistry. If you gave every cent of your wealth to a university to advance such co-operation, you would still be taking the longest way round.”
“I’ll never do anything for a university. They ain’t practical.”
“Mr. Ferry, that remark is the remark of a great man who on most subjects is an ignoramus.”
“Trying to insult me?”