suddenly—“they’re folks! I saw an automobile. Oh, gee! are we that high up?”
“Walk over this way,” said Dabster.
He showed her the great city lying like an orderly array of toys far below, starred here and there, early as it was, by the first beacon lights of the winter afternoon. And then the bay and sea to the south and east vanishing mysteriously into the sky.
“I don’t like it,” declared Daisy, with troubled blue eyes. “Say we go down.”
But the philosopher was not to be denied his opportunity. He would let her behold the grandeur of his mind, the half-nelson he had on the infinite, and the memory he had for statistics. And then she would nevermore be content to buy chewing gum at the smallest store in New York. And so he began to prate of the smallness of human affairs, and how that even so slight a removal from earth made man and his works look like one tenth part of a dollar thrice computed. And that one should consider the sidereal system and the maxims of Epictetus and be comforted.
“You don’t carry me with you,” said Daisy. “Say, I think it’s awful to be up so high that folks look like fleas. One of them we saw might have been Joe. Why, Jimmy! we might as well be in New Jersey! Say, I’m afraid up here!”
The philosopher smiled fatuously.
