On Everything
worked by the simplest of instruments. I asked him if he had read "The Time Machine." He aid impatiently, "You have," and went on to explain the little dial.
"They cost a deal of money, but then," he added, with beautiful simplicity, "I have told you that I am Baron Hogg."
Rich people played at it apparently as ours do at ballooning, and with the same uncertainty.
I asked him whether he could get forward into the future. He simply said: "What do you mean?"
"Why," said I, "according to St. Thomas, time is a dimension, just like space."
When I said the words "St. Thomas" he made a curious sign, like a man saluting. "Yes," he said, gravely and reverently, "but you know well the future is forbidden to men." He then made a digression to ask if St. Thomas was read in 1909. I told him to what extent, and by whom. He got intensely interested. He looked right up into my face, and began making gestures with his hands.
"Now that really is interesting," he said.
I asked him "Why?"
"Well, you see," he said in an off-hand way, "there's the usual historic quarrel. On the face of it one would say he wasn't read at all, looking up the old Records, and so on. Then some Specialist gets hold of all the mentions of him in the early Twentieth Century, and writes a book to show that even the politicians had heard of him. Then there is a
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