ny. I get a good
salary--I send enough to my mother and my sister, in Chicago, for them
to live on. And I have what I need myself. I've got a job, professor,
and standing, and respect." He paused. "Now, suppose I had arms. I'd
have to start from scratch, all over again. I'd have to start from the
bottom up, just learning the basic elements of any job I signed on for.
I'd be a forty-two-year-old man doing the work of an eighteen-year-old.
And not making much money. And not having much standing, or respect."

Charley took the cigarette out of his mouth with his right foot, held it
for a second and put it back.

"I'd be normal," he said. "I'd be just like everybody else, professor.
And what do I want anything like _that_ for?"

* * * * *

Professor Lightning tried everything, but it wasn't any good. "Fame," he
said, and Charley pointed out, calmly and reasonably, that the kind of
fame he'd get from being an experimental subject was just like being a
freak, all over again--except that it would wear off, and then, he
asked, where would he be? Professor Lightning talked about Man's Duty to
Science, and Charley countered with Science's Duty to Man. Professor
Lightning tried friendship, and argument, and even force--but nothing
worked. Incredible as it seemed to the professor, Charley was content to
remain a freak, an Armless Wonder. More, he seemed to be proud and happy
about it.

It was too bad that the professor didn't think of the one argument that
might have worked. In the long run, it wouldn't have made any
difference, perhaps--but it would have cleared matters up, right there
and then. Because the one workable argument had a good chance of
succeeding.

But, then, Professor Lightning really didn't understand carny. He never
thought of the one good argument, and after a while he gave up, and went
away.

Of course, that was several days later. Professor Lightning told Charley
that he was leaving for New York, and Charley said: "What? In the middle
of the season?" Then he told Wrout, and Wrout screamed and ranted and
swore that Professor Lightning would never work in carny again. "I'll
have you blacklisted!" he roared.

And Professor Lightning shrugged and smiled and went away to pack. He
took all his notebooks, and all the cages with little animals in them,
and he didn't seem at all disturbed. "I'll find another subject," he
told Charley, when he left. "When they find out what I've g