determined than ever not to know him on any terms.

ZOO. Yet you would be much more conscious of him, would you not?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I should not allow that to commit me to any
familiarity with the fellow. I have been twice at the Summer Sports at
the South Pole; and this man pretended he had been to the North Pole,
which can hardly be said to exist, as it is in the middle of the sea. He
declared he had hung his hat on it.

ZOO [_laughing_] He knew that travellers are amusing only when they are
telling lies. Perhaps if you looked at that man through a microscope you
would find some good in him.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do not want to find any good in him. Besides,
madam, what you have just said encourages me to utter an opinion of
mine which is so advanced! so intellectually daring! that I have never
ventured to confess to it before, lest I should be imprisoned for
blasphemy, or even burnt alive.

ZOO. Indeed! What opinion is that?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_after looking cautiously round_] I do not
approve of microscopes. I never have.

ZOO. You call that advanced! Oh, Daddy, that is pure obscurantism.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Call it so if you will, madam; but I maintain
that it is dangerous to shew too much to people who do not know what
they are looking at. I think that a man who is sane as long as he looks