第42章
"Bipeds," he said, solemnly."See what they become even at the small elevation of 340 feet--mere crawling insects going to and fro at random.""Oh, they ain't anything of the kind," exclaimed Daisy, suddenly--"they're folks! I saw an automobile.Oh, gee! are we that high up?""Walk over this way," said Dabster.
He showed her the great city lying like an orderly array of toys far below, starred here and there, early as it was, by the first beacon lights of the winter afternoon.And then the bay and sea to the south and east vanishing mysteriously into the sky.
"I don't like it," declared Daisy, with troubled blue eyes."Say we go down."But the philosopher was not to be denied his opportunity.He would let her behold the grandeur of his mind, the half-nelson he had on the infinite, and the memory he had for statistics.And then she would nevermore be content to buy chewing gum aat the smallest store in New York.And so he began to prate of the smallness of human affairs, and how that even so slight a removal from earth made man and his works look like one tenth part of a dollar thrice computed.And that one should consider the sidereal system and the maxims of Epictetus and be comforted.
"You don't carry me with you," said Daisy."Say, I think it's awful to be up so high that folks look like fleas.One of them we saw might have been Joe.Why, Jiminy! we might as well be in New Jersey! Say, I'm afraid up here!"The philosopher smiled fatuously.
"The earth," said he, "is itself only as a grain of wheat in space.
Look up there."
Daisy gazed upward apprehensively.The short day was spent and the stars were coming out above.
"Yonder star," said Dabster, "is Venus, the evening star.She is 66,000,000 miles from the sun.""Fudge!" said Daisy, with a brief flash of spirit, "where do you think I come from--Brooklyn? Susie Price, in our store--her brother sent her a ticket to go to San Francisco--that's only three thousand miles."The philosopher smiled indulgently.
"Our world," he said, "is 91,000,000 miles from the sun.There are eighteen stars of the first magnitude that are 211,000 times further from us than the sun is.If one of them should be extinguished it would be three years before we would see its light go out.There are six thousand stars of the sixth magnitude.It takes thirty-six years for the light of one of them to reach the earth.With an eighteen-foot telescope we can see 43,000,000stars, including those of the thirteenth magnitude, whose light takes 2,700 years to reach us.Each of these stars--""You're lyin'," cried Daisy, angrily."You're tryin' to scare me.
And you have; I want to go down!"
She stamped her foot.
"Arcturus--" began the philosopher, soothingly, but he was interrupted by a demonstration out of the vastness of the nature that he was endeavoring to portray with his memory instead of his heart.For to the heart-expounder of nature the stars were set in the firmament expressly to give soft light to lovers wandering happily beneath them; and if you stand tiptoe some September night with your sweetheart on your arm you can almost touch them with your hand.Three years for their light to reach us, indeed!
Out of the west leaped a meteor, lighting the roof of the skyscraper almost to midday.Its fiery parabola was limned against the sky toward the east.It hissed as it went, and Daisy screamed.
"Take me down," she cried, vehemently, "you--you mental arithmetic!"Dabster got her to the elevator, and inside of it.She was wild-eyed, and she shuddered when the express made its debilitating drop.
Outside the revolving door of the skyscraper the philosopher lost her.She vanished; and he stood, bewildered, without figures or statistics to aid him.
Joe had a lull in trade, and by squirming among his stock succeeded in lighting a cigarette and getting one cold foot against the attenuated stove.
The door was burst open, and Daisy, laughing, crying, scattering fruit and candies, tumbled into his arms.
"Oh, Joe, I've been up on the skyscraper.Ain't it cozy and warm and homelike in here! I'm ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me."