ssert that any mathematical fact is not
an actual one. Prove to me that figures lie, and you can have my
daughter! But this is only nonsense. You are presumptuous and something
of an ass, sir. Good day, sir!"

When Professor Morgan imparted to his sweetheart the result of this
interesting interview, they were both somewhat cast down. It was she who
first recovered.

"And so papa said you could have me, did he, if you could prove to him
that figures ever lied?"

"Yes, he said that, though I don't suppose he meant it. It was simply a
sort of defiance he blurted out in his anger. But what difference does
it make? How could I prove an impossibility in any event, even if such a
grotesque challenge were accepted in earnest? When I said to him that
figures might give wrong impressions, it was only to convey the idea
that people who cared very much for each other might get along with very
little money, and that the ordinary estimates for necessary income did
not apply."

"You don't know papa! He'll keep his word, even one uttered in
excitement. He has almost a superstition regarding the literal
observance of any promise made, though it might be accidental and really
meaning nothing. You are very clever--as great a mathematician as papa
is. You must prove to him that figures sometimes really lie, even where
computations are all correct. Surely, there must be some way of doing
that."

"I'm afraid not, dear. The moon isn't made of green cheese."

"But there must be some way, and you must find it. You shall be like a
knight of old, who is to gain a maiden's hand by the accomplishment of
some great deed of derring-do. Am I not worth it, sir?" And she stood
before him jauntily, with her pretty elbows out.

He looked down into a face so fair and so full of all fealty and promise
of sweet wifehood that he resolved in an instant that if it lay in human
power to meet the terms of the old man's challenge the thing should be
accomplished. He said as much, and what he said was punctuated labially.
Being a professor, it would never have done for him to neglect his
punctuation.

It was not three months after the stormy Macadam-Morgan interview that
Professor Morgan's great book on "Eclipses Past and to Come" made its
appearance. And it was not three weeks after that great work's
appearance when all the scientific world was in a turmoil.

Professor Macadam had, for a season after the interview between him and
Professor Morgan, main