wton's law, bodies attract one another
directly as their masses, and inversely to the square of their
distances. Here I weigh more, because I am nearer the centre of
attraction; and on another planet I should weigh more or less
according to the mass of the planet."

"What!" said Bell, "in the moon--"

"In the moon my weight, which is two hundred pounds at Liverpool,
would be only thirty-two pounds."

"And in the sun?"

"O, in the sun I should weigh more than five thousand pounds!"

"Heavens!" said Bell; "you'd need a derrick to move your legs."

"Probably," answered the doctor, laughing at Bell's amazement; "but
here the difference is imperceptible, and by an equal effort of the
muscles Bell would leap as high as on the docks at Liverpool."

"Yes, but in the sun?" urged Bell.

"My friend," answered the doctor, "the upshot of it all is that we are
well off where we are, and need not want to go elsewhere."

"You said just now," resumed Altamont, "that perhaps it would be worth
while to make a journey to the centre of the world; has such an
undertaking ever been thought of?"

"Yes, and this is all I'm going to say about the Pole. There is no
point in the world which has given rise to more chimeras and
hypotheses. The ancients, in their ignorance, placed the garden of the
Hesperides there. In the Middle Ages it was supposed that the earth
was upheld on axles placed at the poles, on which it revolved; but
when comets were seen moving freely, that idea had to be given up.
Later, there was a French astronomer, Bailly, who said that the lost
people mentioned by Plato, the Atlantides, lived here. Finally, it has
been asserted in our own time that there was an immense opening at the
poles, from which came the Northern Lights, and through which one
could reach the inside of the earth; since in the hollow sphere two
planets, Pluto and Proserpine, were said to move, and the air was
luminous in consequence of the strong pressure it felt."

"That has been maintained?" asked Altamont.

"Yes, it has been written about seriously. Captain Symmes, a
countryman of ours, proposed to Sir Humphry Davy, Humboldt, and Arago,
to undertake the voyage! But they declined."

"And they did well."

"I think so. Whatever it may be, you see, my friends, that the
imagination has busied itself about the Pole, and that sooner or later
we must come to the reality."

"At any rate, we shall see for ourselves," said Johnson, who clung to
his