"You don't say so!"
"To be sure I do. At the same time if you say your legs are bowed, there is, of course, trouble somewhere."
"Of course," assented Mr. Cinch.
"The question is, where? Some people would say, in the legs. They would try to make you believe that your legs, mere combinations of flesh and blood, could go off by themselves and get bowed, or knock-kneed, or long or short, or slim or fat, or gouty, or palsied, or paralyzed, or rheumatic, or shriveled or anything else just as they wanted to and all of their own option, as though they were a living soul with a living will and not simply so many square inches of inanimate matter. Now, Mr. Cinch, that's all nonsense. Don't you believe a word of it!"
"OUR BODIES ARE BUT GHOSTS," SAID THE SCIENTIST.
"Well, now," replied the old man slowly, "I never thought of it that-away. It don't seem as if they could go and get bowed all of themselves. But," and he looked down toward them dubiously, "they do 'pear to be bowed, now, don't they?"
"Maybe they do. We'll come to that presently. But first let me prove that, if they are bowed, they didn't do it. Suppose you were to have them cut off at your hips, would they go on and bow more?"
"Why, no."