"That don't follow. Read your Bible."
"If I'm not right, how did it happen there were men here when the North was first discovered?"
"Sh!"
"Mac's got the floor."
"Shut up!"
But the Boy thumped the table with one hand and arraigned the schoolmaster with the other.
"Now, Mac, I put it to you as a man o' science: if the race had got a foothold in any other part o' the world, what in Sam Hill could make 'em come up here?"
"We're here."
"Yes, tomfools after gold. They never dreamed there was gold. No, Siree! the only thing on earth that could make men stay here, would be that they were born here, and didn't know any better. Don't the primitive man cling to his home, no matter what kind o' hole it is? He's afraid to leave it. And these first men up here, why, it's plain as day—they just hung on, things gettin' worse and worse, and colder and colder, and some said, as the old men we laugh at say at home, 'The climate ain't what it was when I was a boy,' and nobody believed 'em, but everybody began to dress warmer and eat fat, and—"
"All that Buffon says is—"