e the sensations of sound or light or
what not, and so, of course, we can't know about them--not until they
reach us."

"Precisely," said the tutor. He had a suave and slightly alien accent.

"Well, just tell me how that proves a thunder-storm in a desert island
makes no noise."

"If a thing is inaudible--" began the tutor.

"That's mere juggling!" vociferated the boy, "That's merely the same
kind of toy-shop brain-trick you gave us out of Greek philosophy
yesterday. They said there was no such thing as motion because at every
instant of time the moving body had to be somewhere, so how could it get
anywhere else? Good Lord! I can make up foolishness like that myself.
For instance: A moving body can never stop. Why? Why, because at every
instant of time it must be going at a certain rate, so how can it ever
get slower? Pooh!" He stopped. He had been gesticulating with one hand,
which he now jammed wrathfully into his pocket.

The tutor must have derived great pleasure from his own smile, for he
prolonged and deepened and variously modified it while his shiny little
calculating eyes travelled from one to the other of his ruddy scholars.
He coughed, consulted his notes, and went through all the paces of
superiority. "I can find nothing about a body's being unable to stop,"
said he, gently. "If logic makes no appeal to you, gentlemen--"

"Oh, bunch!" exclaimed the second tennis boy, in the slang of his
period, which was the early eighties. "Look here. Color has no existence
outside of our brain--that's the idea?"

The tutor bowed.

"And sound hasn't? and smell hasn't? and taste hasn't?"

The tutor had repeated his little bow after each.

"And that's because they depend on our senses? Very well. But he claims
solidity and shape and distance do exist independently of us. If we all
died, they'd he here just the same, though the others wouldn't. A flower
would go on growing, but it would stop smelling. Very well. Now you tell
me how we ascertain solidity. By the touch, don't we? Then, if there was
nobody to touch an object, what then? Seems to me touch is just as much
of a sense as your nose is." (He meant no personality, but the first boy
choked a giggle as the speaker hotly followed up his thought.) "Seems
to me by his reasoning that in a desert island there'd be nothing it
all--smells or shapes--not even an island. Seems to me that's what you
call logic."

The tutor directed his smile at the open window. "Berkel