This was like telling a painter that color had no emotion, or a scientist that science had no reasonableness. The old puzzle-maker gasped.
"No fun!" he exclaimed. "It is the mos' fun in the world. I show you!"
Pulling from his pocket a pencil and an old envelope he drew a baseball diamond, and marked the positions of the players. Eric's interest arose at once, for he was a keen baseball fan. As the sketch grew the old man talked, describing a queer entanglement of play.
"Now!" said the old man, "what shall he do?"
The boy, judging from his knowledge of the game, made a suggestion, which the other negatived. As soon as the boy made a guess, the other showed him to be wrong. Eric, really interested in the baseball problem, cudgelled his brains, but could find no way out.
"I show you!" the old man repeated.
Using a very simple rule of algebra, which the boy knew quite well, but giving an application he never would have thought of, Dan brought the solution in a second. Hardly believing that mere mathematics could be of any service in a baseball game, Eric tested the result. It was exactly as the old man had said.
"Gee," he said, "that's great!"
The puzzle-maker smiled, and showed him how mass-play in football was a matter of science, not strength, and how lacrosse was a question of trajectory.
"Not only in games," he said. "'Rithmetic, geometry—in everything. You know Muldoon."