got a circle
of 3-1/8 times the diameter by making it the supposition to set out with
that there was such a circle; and then finding certain consequences which,
so it happened, were not inconsistent with the supposition on which they
were made. Error is sometimes self-consistent. However, E. M., to be quite
sure of his ground, wrote a short letter, stating what he took to be Mr.
Smith's hypothesis, containing the following: 'On AC as diameter, describe
the circle D, which by hypothesis shall be equal to three and one-eighth
times the length of AC.... I beg, before proceeding further, to ask whether
I have rightly stated your argument.' To which Mr. Smith replied: 'You have
stated my argument with perfect accuracy.' Still E. M. went on, and we
could not help, after the above, taking these letters as the initials of
Everlasting Mercy. At last, however, when Mr. Smith flatly denied that the
area of the circle lies between those of the inscribed and circumscribed
polygons, E. M. was fairly beaten, and gave up the task. Mr. Smith was left
to write his preface, to talk about the certain victory of truth--which,
oddly enough, is the consolation of all hopelessly mistaken men; to compare
himself with Galileo; and to expose to the world the perverse behavior of
the Astronomer Royal, on whom he wanted to fasten a conversation, and who
replied, 'It would be a waste of time, Sir, to listen to anything you could
have to say on such a subject.'

"Having thus disposed of Mr. James Smith, we proceed to a few remarks on
the subject: it is one which a journal would never originate, but which is
rendered necessary from time to time by the attempts of the autopseustic to
become {108} heteropseustic. To the mathematician we have nothing to say:
the question is, what kind of assurance can be given to the world at large
that the wicked mathematicians are not acting in concert to keep down their
superior, Mr. James Smith, the current Galileo of the quadrature of the
circle.

"Let us first observe that this question does not stand alone:
independently of the millions of similar problems which exist in higher
mathematics, the finding of the diagonal of a square has just the same
difficulty, namely, the entrance of a pair of lines of which one cannot be
definitely expressed by means of the other. We will show the reader who is
up to the multiplication-table how he may go on, on, on, ever nearer, never
there, in finding the diagonal of a square fr