“Why is it?”
“Why is it? I never saw such an idiot. Ain’t this balloon and the bronze horse the same thing under different names?”
“No, they’re not. One is a balloon and the other’s a horse. It’s very different. Next you’ll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing.”
“By Jackson, Huck’s got him ag’in! Dey ain’t no wigglin’ outer dat!”
“Shut your head, Jim; you don’t know what you’re talking about. And Huck don’t. Look here, Huck, I’ll make it plain to you, so you can understand. You see, it ain’t the mere form that’s got anything to do with their being similar or unsimilar, it’s the principle involved; and the principle is the same in both. Don’t you see, now?”
I turned it over in my mind, and says:
“Tom, it ain’t no use. Principles is all very well, but they don’t git around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain’t no sort of proof of what a horse can do.”
“Shucks, Huck, you don’t get the idea at all. Now look here a minute—it’s perfectly plain. Don’t we fly through the air?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Don’t we fly high or fly low, just as we please?”