Produced by Charlene Taylor, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images produced by the Wright American Fiction Project.)
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
"My great-grandfather was a philosopher, and why should not his descendants be allowed the privilege of cogitating for themselves? I tell you that Sir Isaac Newton was mistaken. There is no such thing as the attraction of gravitation."
This was said by Toney Belton, a young lawyer, in reply to his friend Tom Seddon, a junior member of the same profession.
They were seated on the veranda of a hotel in the town of Bella Vista, gazing at the starry heavens; and Tom had made some remark about the wonderful revelations of science.
"What a pity it is, Toney Belton, that you are not a subject of her Majesty of England. Your extraordinary discovery would entitle you to the honors of knighthood, and we might read of a Sir Anthony Belton as well as of a Sir Isaac Newton. But how will you demonstrate to the world that there is no such thing as the attraction of gravitation?"
"Demonstrate it, Tom Seddon! Why, I can make it as plain as the proboscis on the countenance of an elephant."
"Do you mean to say that bodies do not fall to the earth by the power of attraction?"
"That is precisely what I mean. I assert that a heavy body may fall upward as well as downward."
"As the old Greek said, Strike, but hear, so I say, Laugh, but listen. Will you allow me to suppose a case?"
"That is the privilege of all philosophers. The cosmology of the Oriental sage would have fallen into the vast vacuity of space had he not brought to its support a hypothetical foundation. Proceed with your demonstration."
"Suppose, then, that an immense well should be dug from the surface of the American continent entirely through the earth. We will not stop to inquire into the possibility of such an excavation, but will suppose that the work has been accomplished."
"Be it so. Your well has been dug, and extends entirely through the earth, from the United States of America to the Celestial Empire. What then?"