that says 'Drome,' not to mention her demon."
Rhodes laughed.
"We are getting there, Bill; we're getting there—near the scene of those awful tragedies at any rate."
Ere long we reached the top. Here we passed the last shrub and in a little space came to a small glacier. The tracks of the horses led straight across it. But our route did not go thither; it led up over the rocks.
Suddenly, as we toiled our way upward, Rhodes, with the remark that Science had some strange stories to tell, asked me if I had ever head of Tartaglia's slates. I never had, though I had heard of Tartaglia, and I w'anted to know about those slates.
"Tombstones," said Milton.
"Tombstones?"
"Tombstones, Bill. What with the terrible poverty, Tartaglia, when educating himself, could not get even a slate, and so he went out and wrote his exercises on tombstones."
"Gosh!"
"And did you ever hear of Demoivre's death? There is a problem for your psychological sharks."
"How did the gentleman die?"
"He told them that he had to sleep so many minutes longer each day."
"And did he do it?"
"That's what he did, Bill."
"And," I asked with growing curiosity, "when he had slept through the twenty-four hours? Then what?"
"He never woke up," said Milton Rhodes.
And did I know what the heart of a man does when his head is cut off? I (who was wondering at his sudden turn to these queer scientific matters) said I supposed that the heart stops beating. But Rhodes said no; the organ continues its pulsations for an hour or longer.
And had I heard of Spallanzani's very curious experiment with the crow? I never had, but I wanted to. Spallanzani, Milton told me, gave a crow a good feed and then chopped off its head. (That decapitation didn't surprize me any, for I knew that Spallanzani was a real scientist.) The body was placed in a temperature the same as that of the living bird and kept there for six hours. Spallanzani then took the body out, opened it and found that the food which he had given the bird was thoroughly digested?
"These scientists," was my comment, "are queer birds themselves."
Then he told me some strange things about sympathetic vibrations—that a drinking-glass can be smashed by the human voice (I knew that); that an alpine avalanche can be started thundering down by the tinkle of a bell; and so, as Tyndall tells us, the muleteers in the Swiss mountains silence the bells of their animals when in proximity to such danger. And he told me of that musician who came near destroying the Colebrook Dale suspension bridge with his fiddle![1]
Then came the strangest thing of all—the story of Vogt's cricket. The professor severed the body of a cricket (a living cricket, of course) into two pieces, and the fore part turned round and ate up the hinder!
"Yes," Milton Rhodes said, "Science has some queer stories to tell."
"I should say that she has!" I commented, "And maybe she'll have a stranger one than ever to tell when we get back—that is, if we ever do."
We passed McClure's Rock, height about 7,400 feet; made our way along the head of a small glacier, which fell away toward the Nisqually; ascended the cleaver, at this point very low and
along the base of which we had been
- ↑ "When the bridge at Colebrooke Dale (the first iron bridge in the world) was building. a fiddler came along and said to the workmen that he could fiddle their bridge down. The builders thought this boast a fiddle-de-dee, and invited the itinerant musician to fiddle away to his heart's content. One note after another was struck upon the strings until one was found with which the bridge was in sympathy. When the bridge began to shake violently, the incredulous workmen were alarmed at the unexpected result, and ordered the fiddler to stop."—Prof. J. Lovering.
