FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112  
113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   >>   >|  
put _hors de combat_--which should have been _cache_[221]--by pebbles from a sling. If Goliath had crept into a snail-shell, David would have cracked the Philistine with his foot. There is something like modesty in the implication that the crack-shell pebble has not yet taken effect; it might have been thought that the slinger would by this time have been singing-- "And thrice [and one-eighth] I routed all my foes, And thrice [and one-eighth] I slew the slain." But he promises to give the public his nut-cracker if I do not, before the Budget is concluded, "unravel" the paradox, which is the mathematico-geometrical nut he has given me to crack. Mr. Smith is a crack man: he will crack his own nut; he will crack my shell; in the mean time he cracks himself up. Heaven send he do not crack himself into lateral contiguity with himself. On June 27 I received a letter, in the handwriting of Mr. James Smith, signed Nauticus. I have ascertained {126} that one of the letters to the _Athenaeum_ signed Nauticus is in the same handwriting. I make a few extracts: "... The important question at issue has been treated by a brace of mathematical birds with too much levity. It may be said, however, that sarcasm and ridicule sometimes succeed, where reason fails.... Such a course is not well suited to a discussion.... For this reason I shall for the future [this implies there has been a past, so that Nauticus is not before me for the first time] endeavor to confine myself to dry reasoning from incontrovertible premises. ... It appears to me that so far as his theory is concerned he comes off unscathed. You might have found "a hole in Smith's circle" (have you seen a pamphlet bearing this title? [I never heard of it until now]), but after all it is quite possible the hole may have been left by design, for the purpose of entrapping the unwary." [On the publication of the above, the author of the pamphlet obligingly forwarded a copy to me of _A Hole in Smith's Circle_--by a Cantab: Longman and Co., 1859, (pp. 15). "It is pity to lose any fun we can get out of the affair," says my almamaternal brother: to which I add that in such a case warning without joke is worse than none at all, as giving a false idea of the nature of the danger. The Cantab takes some absurdities on which I have not dwelt: but there are enough to afford a Cantab from every college his own separate hunting ground.] Does this hint that his mode of proof,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112  
113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Cantab

 

Nauticus

 

pamphlet

 
eighth
 
reason
 

handwriting

 
signed
 

thrice

 

afford

 

circle


bearing
 

design

 

purpose

 

college

 

ground

 
reasoning
 

incontrovertible

 

premises

 

endeavor

 
confine

appears

 
unscathed
 

hunting

 

theory

 

concerned

 

separate

 

absurdities

 
warning
 

brother

 

almamaternal


affair

 

forwarded

 

obligingly

 

author

 

unwary

 

publication

 

Circle

 

giving

 

Longman

 

danger


nature

 

entrapping

 

routed

 

singing

 

slinger

 

effect

 
thought
 

promises

 

paradox

 

mathematico