There are many tales of how she came to perish in the broad river. Some say she drowned herself, some say the young men, bewildered, cast her into the waters, and others that the strangers flung her into the great body of the stream. None knows. But what is known is that with her death in that little town and in many other towns great and small the old pastor and his daughter were forgotten, and in their place ruled over hearts and minds Herr Doktor Todt and his wife, the geborene Krieg.
XXXIV
PARALLEL LINES DO NOT MEET
THIS is quite a different sort of story. It is about a princess who disbelieved in arithmetic.
“Was she a French princess?” inquired the publisher.
“Certainly not,” said the author, “and I cannot think why you should suppose that she was. On the contrary, she lived in Hammersmith Broadway, and took the view that there was no reason why parallel lines should not meet. ‘Why,’ she would ask, ‘should they be snobs just because they happen to be parallel? Besides,’ she would add, ‘when I draw them they do meet.’”
“But,” said a celebrated professor from the London School of Economics who had been summoned by her anxious parents to cope with the situation, “those lines which you have drawn aren’t parallel.”
“Why?” inquired the princess.
“Why?” said the professor, “but it is obvious to anybody. Can’t you see that they meet?”