ll indeed take your good advice
and give the money to the poor."

"Don't I get anything for my wisdom?" demanded the youth.

"You have already received something much better than money,"
said the wise man.

The Man Who Believed in Miracles

Once upon a time a traveler arrived in a land quite like our
own, full of modern technology like cars and computers and whistling
teapots, but with these two differences: there were no television
sets and no airplanes. In fact, nothing at all had ever been seen
in the sky, not even a bird, and the only movies the people ever saw
were in the theaters.

The traveler stayed for about a month on the eastern shore where
he had arrived, and then decided to visit the western cities. He
mentioned his decision one evening at a meeting of the principal
scientists and educators of the region, who had gathered to hear of
his travels. Someone mentioned that the west had much to offer, but
that the journey between the two areas was unpleasant, consisting of
crossing a hot, empty desert. "In that case," said the traveler,
"I'll just fly."

"Is that like sleep?" one of the scientists asked.

"No, no," the traveler replied. "You know, fly through the air,
like a bird."

"And what is a bird?" someone asked. And so the traveler began
to explain about flight and what an airplane was and how it flew from
one place to another. The room became very quiet, and the
expressions on the faces of everyone present darkened.

"Does he expect us to believe this?" one man whispered to another.

"Well, you know what liars travelers are," someone else added.
Finally the host spoke up, slightly embarrassed and slightly indignant.

"If this is your idea of a joke," he began, but was interrupted
by the surprised traveler.

"Why, it's no joke at all. People fly all the time."

"I am sorry that you so much underestimate the intelligence and
learning of your audience," said a professor across the table. "That
a person could enter some metal device--like a car with fins--and
rise into the air, and be sustained there, and move forward, why that
clearly violates everything we know about the law of gravity and the
laws of physics. If we have learned anything from a thousand years
of study of the natural world, it is that an object heavier than air
must return immediately to earth when it is tossed into the sky."

"Hear, hear," two or three people muttered.

"Now, if you perhaps mean that thes