“The teeth drop out,” suggested Hopkins.
“True, Mr. Hopkins. Professor Wurtz has pointed out the probable absorption of the teeth or their disappearance under the debilitating influence of mental growth. These people may live solely on saps, juices, milks, liquids, extracts.”
This tickled Hopkins boundlessly, and he rattled away—I don’t know whether it was quotation or improvisation:
“Really I hesitate to say,
What they promise now some day,
When learning and brain
Are fit for the strain,
Of telling the Truth to a hair.
“For the Docs have puzzled it out,
And there isn’t a reason to doubt,