John Brown. Clemens always adored the
thought of Marjorie, and in this article one can see that she ranked
almost next to Joan of Arc in his affections.]
We went out in the loggia by and by and Clemens read aloud from a book
which Professor Zubelin left here a few days ago--'The Religion of a
Democrat'. Something in it must have suggested to Clemens his favorite
science, for presently he said:
"I have been reading an old astronomy; it speaks of the perfect line
of curvature of the earth in spite of mountains and abysses, and I
have imagined a man three hundred thousand miles high picking up a
ball like the earth and looking at it and holding it in his hand.
It would be about like a billiard-ball to him, and he would turn it
over in his hand and rub it with his thumb, and where he rubbed over
the mountain ranges he might say, 'There seems to be some slight
roughness here, but I can't detect it with my eye; it seems
perfectly smooth to look at.' The Himalayas to him, the highest
peak, would be one-sixty-thousandth of his height, or about the one-
thousandth part of an inch as compared with the average man."
I spoke of having somewhere read of some very tiny satellites, one as
small, perhaps, as six miles in diameter, yet a genuine world.
"Could a man live on a world so small as that?" I asked.
"Oh yes," he said. "The gravitation that holds it together would
hold him on, and he would always seem upright, the same as here.
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