ing of Juvenal's, "He who owns the soil, owns up to
the sky." So is this of Virgil's, "Command large fields, but cultivate
small ones."

* * * * *

Can there be any theory or doctrine not connected with our practical
lives so absurd that it will not be accepted as true by many people?
How firmly was a belief in witchcraft held by whole populations for a
generation! My grandfather believed in it, and in spooks and
hobgoblins.

The belief in alchemy still prevails--that the baser metals, by the
aid of the philosopher's stone, can be transmuted into gold and
silver. Quite recently there was a school in a large town in
California for teaching alchemy. As it was a failure, its professor
was involved in litigation with his pupils. I believe the pupils were
chiefly women.

There is a sect in Florida that believe that we live on the inside of
a hollow sphere, instead of on the outside of a revolving globe. I
visited the community with Edison, near Fort Myers, several years ago.
Some of the women were fine-looking. One old lady looked like Martha
Washington, but the men all looked "as if they had a screw loose
somewhere." They believe that the sun and moon and all the starry
hosts of heaven revolve on the inside of this hollow sphere. All our
astronomy goes by the board. They look upon it as puerile and
contemptible. The founder of the sect had said he would rise from the
dead to confirm its truth. His disciples kept his body till the Board
of Health obliged them to bury it.

If any one were seriously to urge that we really walk on our heads
instead of our heels, and cite our baldness as proof, there are
persons who would believe him. It has been urged that flight to the
moon in an aeroplane is possible--the want of air is no hindrance! The
belief in perpetual motion is not yet dead. Many believe that snakes
charm birds. But it has been found that a stuffed snake-skin will
"charm" birds also--the bird is hypnotized by its own fear.

* * * * *

What has become of the hermits?--men and women who preferred to live
alone, holding little or no intercourse with their fellows? In my
youth I knew of several such. There was old Ike Keator, who lived in a
little unpainted house beside the road near the top of the mountain
where we passed over into Batavia Kill. He lived there many years. He
had a rich brother, a farmer in the valley below. Then there was Eri
Gray, who