"Would that cost much?" he asked.
"No, that is only five dollars."
The Professor had meantime found his purse.
"Would it be all right," he began, "—that is, would you mind if
I pay you the money now? I am apt to forget."
"Quite all right," we answered. We said good-by very gently and passed out. We felt somehow as if we had touched a higher life. "Such," we murmured, as we looked about the ancient campus, "are the men of science: are there, perhaps, any others of them round this morning that we might interview?"
[signed]Stephen Leacock
The Epic Standpoint in the War
After more than three years of the War, we are only now beginning to see it, as it is, in its epic immensity. On the eastern front it has been too far from us; on the western front it has been too near us, and we have been too much a part of it, to get any sight at all of that series of monotonous and monstrous battles, a series punctuated only by names: Liege, Antwerp, Mons, Ypres, Verdun and Arras. And if nothing had happened besides the Titanic conflict of material armaments I believe that we should not yet be anywhere near realizing its vastness and its significance.
If we are aware of it now it is because, in the last few months, three events have happened which are of another order: the abdication of Constantine, King of Greece, the Russian Revolution, and the coming of America into the War.
These three events have adjusted and cleared our vision by giving us the true perspective and the scale.