Bluegrass.
No dungeon of clothes can hold me! What a lofty repose comes over me as I survey yon glittering expanse of water, like a blue field of undulating velvet! A tear of joy I give to thee, O mighty sea!
Scythe [writing in his note-book].
Item,—he returns a saline tear to the sea, in memory of his pre-Adamite ancestor. This is the pre-Raphaelism of natural selection.
Whetstone.
You are my scientist, my threefold Professor of three chairs,—natural science, hygiene, and agriculture,—in my Cornville Academy. Now, to create a money-making hunger for science at the Academy we must popularize it. Therefore, give me the scientific facts about the sea in a popular sort of way, so that all may understand and enjoy them.
Scythe.
Its remote abysses are inhabited by the mammoths of natural history and evolutionary philosophy; and vast herds of sea-cattle graze upon its marine meadows, like buffaloes upon the prairies. In fact, our prairies were once the bottom of the sea, and the buffaloes were supposed to have been left when the waters receded.
Bluegrass.
Your marine buffaloes must wear anchors around their necks, instead of cow-bells.