“But how can you determine their height,” asked Mr Scalawag, “if they are merely imaginary? You may just as well imagine them to be a thousand feet, if you try.”
“Rot!” interrupted Professor Cracker; for that was his favourite impression whenever anything was mentioned that was unknown to him. “Rot! there are no such things as intelligent forces of nature, neither imaginary ones nor others. This degrading superstition has now lasted long enough, and this day will make an end to such vagaries.”
“Are you then firmly convinced,” asked Mr Scalawag, rather dejectedly, “that the treasures of the gnomes in the Untersberg do not exist?”
“They exist only in the imagination of fools,” replied the Professor. “There can be no such thing as a spirit, as I shall demonstrate to you to-day by means of my new spiritoscope.”
“It is strange,” now remarked the Rev. Stiffbone, “that there are still some respectable authorities favouring such a superstitious belief. Even the Bible mentions the existence of spirits in more than one instance.”
“Rot!” replied the Professor. “There is no theory so absurd that it may not find admirers among otherwise intelligent people. Only think of the many fools who imagine it to be possible to make cars that are pulled by steam!”
“Do you then believe it to be absolutely impossible to make railways?” asked Mr Scalawag.
“Railways!” sneeringly exclaimed Cracker. “Rot! No man in his sane senses would ever think of such a thing. Steam can blow; but it cannot pull cars; if a steam-engine were invented, it would scald everybody to death. As to those eccentric and fanatical people who now fancy it possible to make a railway between Manchester and Liverpool, I have only to say that we, the scientists of this century, decline to waste our time in examining such wild and extravagant schemes. Even if the tales told in some of the newspapers were true, instead of being deplorable vagaries, and if it were possible to invent such an engine, it would not interest us, for surely nobody would be insane enough to trust his life and his safety to an engine going at the terrible speed of sixteen miles an hour! No, my dear sir! To make a railway is as impossible as that stones should fall from heaven; the reason of which impossibility the Academy of Science has pointed out, namely, because there are no stones in the sky.”
It may be observed that this conversation took place before the time when meteors were known and railways in action; at the present time such a display of scientific ignorance would of course be impossible.
“Suppose,” said the Rev. Stiffbone, “we admit for argument’s sake that a railway could be made on a level plain. What would they do if they were to come to a mountain? They would have to dig a hole through it, pass through it in the dark, and coming out at the other end the passengers would suddenly emerge into the light. This sudden change would undoubtedly strike them blind.”