In a few minutes the statistician returned, bringing with him a tall, cadaverous man, whose leanness was heightened by a long chin beard, which descended upon his chest to the middle button of his coat. Having a beard of this description, the gentleman had no need of a necktie, and having no necktie, he, of course, dispensed with a collar.
"Professor Ariel, my friend Mr. Swift, who wishes to talk business." Mr. Ticks performed the introduction in his blandest manner. The man who seemed to see nothing had seen everything. It had taken the unpractical, the scholar, the dreamer, the muser, to observe the broken remnants of a county fair, and the advertisement of that aeronautic expedition, conducted by the renowned Professor Ariel, who was to have made an ascension at twelve o'clock that awful day, taking with him a couple to be married in the seventh heavens and a Seventh-Day Baptist clergyman to tie the knot. It was at ten in the morning that Russell was closed in, and the balloon and the professor had been ignominiously forgotten.
"Where is your balloon, professor?" asked Swift, when he had learned these preliminary details.
"Darn it all, in that barn there!" The professor spoke as if he had a personal grievance against the barn.
"Are—were they to have paid you for your ascension?"
"Five hundred dollars, and I hain't seen a red, and I can't get out of this infernal place."
"I suppose it is in good condition?" inquired the editor.
"You bet! It's new. Never been used. Cost twenty-five hundred dollars. Cash!"
"How long would it take you to get her ready?"
"Three hours' pushing would do it, I suppose."