XII 

 THE ROUND WORLD 



I HAVE a neighbor, a man now over eighty years 

 of age, who has a philosophy of his own about 

 most things, and who does not believe that the earth 

 is round, nor that it turns round; and he can prove 

 it to you, to his own satisfaction, with his level on 

 the floor. I confess I sympathize with him, and half 

 hoped he could prove it to me, as I am turned 

 topsy-turvy every time I try to see myself on a round 

 globe; but I am also bound to confess that he did 

 not quite convince me. 



I fancy that all persons who think much about 

 the matter have trouble to adjust their notion of a 

 round world to their actual experience. After we 

 have sailed round the world and seen its round 

 shadow eclipsing the moon, and seen the ships drop 

 below the horizon at sea, we still fail to see ourselves 

 (at least I do) as living on the surface of a sphere; by 

 no force of imagination can I do so. The eye reports 

 only a boundless plain, diversified by hills and moun- 

 tains; and travel we never so far, we cannot find the 

 under side of the sphere we can never see ourselves 

 as we see the house-fly crawling over the side of the 

 globe in our room, and we wonder why we do not 

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